The Dark and Deadly Pool (10 page)

“It is to Mr. Jones,” he said. “Early this morning someone walking through a field off Highway 280 found the remains of a car that had been on fire. Inside the car was what was left of a body. One license plate on the car was intact, so from that we traced the car’s owner.” He paused, ran his tongue over his teeth, and shifted his weight so that the chair cracked and creaked, before he added, “We think that the body in the car is the man you call Mr. C. L. Jones.”

“Judging from the automobile tracks leading from the highway into the field,” Detective Jarvis said, “it looked to the officer who wrote up the report that the driver had been speeding, hit a tree, and the car exploded. However, because of Mr. Jones’s past record we’re investigating other possibilities.”

“What other possibilities could there be?” I thought a moment and shivered. “Except for murder.”

“Stay put,” Detective Jarvis told me. “I’ll be right back.” It didn’t take long. He soon returned carrying a folder. He sat down again and opened the folder on the desk, reading through it quickly.

“Suppose you tell me what you know about Mr. Jones,” Detective Jarvis said.

“Is Jones his real name?”

“Just one of the many names he used.”

“You said he had a record. What kind of a record?”

“Theft, burglary, pickpocketing. No armed robbery, though. Couple of probated sentences. Three short prison terms. Early parole each time.”

While Jarvis took notes, I told him everything I knew
about Mr. Jones, which wasn’t much, just how he came to the health club a couple of times a day and met with Mr. Kamara. And how those two men had come asking about Mr. Jones, but I wouldn’t tell them anything.

“Can you describe the men?” Detective Jarvis asked.

“Not very well. One was a real nothing. The other was a ‘before’ picture in a shampoo commercial.”

He sighed patiently and shook his head.

“No good, huh?” I asked. “Okay. I’ll try to remember the description I gave to Tina. Both of them were about my height and kind of stocky. Jowly too. One had black hair. He’s the one I called a greaseball. Both of them real minus types.”

“Let’s get away from your scale of masculine charm. Have you got any idea how old the men were?” he asked.

“Old,” I said.

He looked surprised. “Sixty? Sixty-five?”

“I didn’t say ‘ancient.’ I meant maybe about forty.”

“You said they were wearing business suits. What color?”

“Dark. Maybe brown or blue or charcoal or whatever.”

“Any identifying marks?”

“You mean like designer labels?”

“I mean on the men themselves! Tattoos? Moles? Birthmarks?”

I thought hard, then shook my head. “I would think that being greasy and incredibly ugly would be identifying marks.”

Detective Jarvis closed his eyes for a moment. Then he said, “Would you have recognized their photos if you’d seen them in the books you’ve been looking through?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

“Then how about checking out the rest of the books. How many more there? Two?”

“Okay,” I said, “as long as I can get to work in time.”

He stood, shoving back his chair, which seemed to be permanently dented. “I’m going to have to leave the building. I have an appointment concerning another case. If you see any pictures you recognize, just tell the sergeant at the desk in the next room—the plump guy with the gray hair.” He smiled at me. “You’re probably getting hungry, aren’t you? I’ll send in a hamburger and milk shake for you. Chocolate okay?”

“Great!” I said, and then I got this scary thought. “Is it jail food?”

“No,” he said. “It’s from the hamburger stand around the corner. It’s cop food.”

Cop food. That was almost as interesting. It made the time go faster, but it didn’t help with the pictures. Finally I closed the last book, looked at my watch, and went to tell the sergeant. His desk was a mess of papers and forms and even some photographs.

He nodded. “Thanks for helping.”

“I wasn’t much help. I couldn’t find any of the faces I was looking for.”

“Never mind. You gave us something to go on with the Jones case.”

I had to ask. “Was Lamar Boudry able to identify any of the photos when he was in here yesterday?”

The sergeant shook his head. “No. He drew a blank too.”

He picked up a stack of photographs and thumped their edges on the desk, trying to get them aligned. Then he shoved them to the far right corner, just next to me. I automatically glanced down at the photo on top.

“But you’ve found one of the men in the business suits.”

“No.” He looked puzzled.

I pointed to the man in the photograph. He was wearing a hat, but I would have recognized him anyway. “This man,” I said. “He’s one of the two who came into the health club to ask about Mr. Jones.”

“Is that so?” He became very interested. “You’re sure of that?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Very interesting. Very interesting indeed.” He reached for the phone and dialed.

“Why is it so interesting?”

“We suspect this perpetrator may have a tie-in with a branch of the syndicate in Miami.”

He began talking to someone on the phone. I looked at my watch. I had to leave right this very minute and hope that traffic on the Katy Freeway was light so I could get to the Ridley on time. I hurried out of the room, down the hall, and managed to catch an open elevator.

Fortunately, I got to the hotel in time to change into my shorts and health-club T-shirt before three o’clock. I even had two minutes to spare, so I quickly tidied up the women’s dressing room.

When I returned to the office, Art Mart had appeared. He was sitting behind the desk, his chin on his hands, staring glumly into space.

“Guess what?” I asked.

“It’s about time you got here,” he snapped, and stood up.

“I’m two minutes early.”

“I’ll give you a medal.” He pulled his car keys out of the desk and squeezed around me.

“But guess what?”

“Don’t say, ‘guess what.’ I hate it when people say ‘guess what.’ ”

“Sorry,” I said.

“So what is it?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to—”

He clamped his teeth together and almost growled. “I just said I didn’t want to hear—Oh, forget it. Have you got something I’m supposed to know, or haven’t you?”

“I have,” I said. “I just came from the police station.”

He looked startled. “Were you able to ID the thieves?”

“No,” I said, “but I saw—ID’d—somebody else. Mr. Jones. You know, the Mr. Jones who comes every day to the club?”

Art leaned on the desk and stared at me. “What about Mr. Jones?”

At last I had an interested audience. “I showed Mr. Jones’s picture to Detective Jarvis, and Detective Jarvis told me they had found a burned-up car this morning, and the car belonged to Mr. Jones. In fact, there was a body in the car, so they think that was probably Mr. Jones.”

Art straightened up and whistled. He looked kind of sick for a minute. “That’s awful,” he said.

I nodded. “Somebody ought to tell Mr. Kamara about it. I think that he and Mr. Jones were friends.”

“Where’d you get that idea?” Art asked.

“Well, they were always talking together. Mr. Kamara isn’t very friendly with anyone else.”

“Mr. Kamara hasn’t any friends,” Art said.

I looked through the large glass window toward the inner pool. As usual, Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee were seated together. Pauly, thank goodness, was nowhere in sight. Just a few people were in the club at this time, but I could see Mr. Kamara in his favorite spot at the table behind the large potted palm tree.

“There’s Mr. Kamara. I’d better go and tell him,” I said.

“You’d better get to work,” Art said. “The ladies’ dressing room needs straightening, and naturally I can’t go in there while guests are in the club.”

“Deeley’s still out sick?”

“That’s right. So get to work. I’ll tell Mr. Kamara.”

“I guess that’s more proper. After all, you’re the one in charge.”

“Glad you noticed,” Art said, and left the office.

I would have known that Deeley wasn’t back without Art Mart’s mentioning it. The desk hadn’t been straightened. It looked just the way I had left it. Even the note paper with the four circles on it lay next to the pad. As I looked at those circles again, an idea wiggled so deeply in my mind that I couldn’t catch it. There was something about those four circles in that crescent shape. But what? No matter how hard I tried, the idea wouldn’t come.

I couldn’t just stand there, trying to catch an idea. I had work to do, so I went straight to the dressing room, then realized that I had tidied it when I changed clothes here a few minutes ago. I strolled back through the office and stood in the doorway, surveying the pool area. Art had gone. Mr. Kamara was nowhere in sight.

Mrs. Bandini called to me and gestured wildly with both arms, so I walked over to join her and Mrs. Larabee.

“What is going on?” she asked in a stage whisper loud enough to be heard in the hotel.

“We are not ones to eavesdrop,” Mrs. Larabee said, “but there was a commotion we couldn’t miss going on behind the potted palm.”

I glanced in the direction of the palm. It was where Mr. Kamara had been sitting. “What kind of commotion?” I asked.

Mrs. Bandini lit up. “Mr. Martin came and said something to Mr. Kamara—that part we missed—then Mr.
Kamara dropped his coffee cup with a crash and shouted something in his own language—which we are not familiar with—and Mr. Martin told him to calm down, but it took him a while.”

She stopped for breath, and Mrs. Larabee took up the story. “Naturally, we wanted to see if we could help, so we got up and looked around the palm, and Mr. Kamara’s face was kind of green. I spoke right up and asked if I could get him a glass of water or something, and he shouted at me.”

“We don’t know what he shouted,” Mrs. Bandini said, “but his tone of voice left nothing to our imaginations.”

“We have rarely been so insulted,” Mrs. Larabee said. She folded her hands primly in her lap and looked indignant.

Mrs. Bandini didn’t waste time with attitudes. She leaned forward and said, “So he marched right out of here, and Mr. Martin left, too, and we thought maybe you could tell us what was going on.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down. The only other guests in the club at this time were outdoors catching some rays. Nobody needed my assistance at this moment. “I knew Mr. Kamara would be upset when he heard the news.”

“What news?” they asked in unison.

“The news about Mr. C. L. Jones.”

I thought I’d have to explain who Mr. Jones was, but they both knew. Mrs. Larabee nodded, and Mrs. Bandini said, “That weasely little man who chats with Mr. Kamara every day.”

“Yes,” I said. “I told Art Mart—uh, Mr. Martin—that Mr. Kamara would be upset. He didn’t think so, but I was right.”

“Upset about what?” Mrs. Larabee asked.

“This morning the police found a car that had burned
during the night. It was off Highway 288. One license plate was intact, so they traced the owner of the car. It was Mr. Jones’s car. They also found what was left of a body inside the car. They think it might be Mr. Jones.”

For about ten seconds Mrs. Bandini closed her eyes and murmured a very short prayer. Mrs. Larabee tried to look pious. Then they began talking at once.

“How did you find out?”

“How can they tell if it’s Mr. Jones?”

“Was it murder?”

“How come we didn’t see it on TV news?”

“Poor Mr. Kamara. If they were friends, it must have been a terrible shock.”

Finally Mrs. Bandini put a restraining hand on Mrs. Larabee’s arm, scooted forward so that our faces were almost touching, and said, “Mary Elizabeth, tell us the whole story.”

So I did, all about the police station and the mug shots and everything.

“If he wanted a complete description of the men in the business suits, your detective should have asked us,” Mrs. Bandini said.

“You saw the men? You can remember them?”

“Of course,” she said. “They came into the club right after I mentioned to you how very much you and my tall, handsome grandson, Eric Canelli, would like each other. And then you walked toward the door, so we watched you and saw the men. As a matter of fact the shorter one with the mole on the side of his face was wearing a pinstriped charcoal Louis Roth suit like the one my son-in-law, Jerry, bought at a sale at Sakowitz just last month. I commented upon it at the time, didn’t I?”

“Distinctly,” Mrs. Larabee said. “And I remember remarking that your son-in-law looks better in blue because
of his complexion, which tends to look sallow in the winter.”

“You saw Jerry when he was trying to get over the flu,” Mrs. Bandini said. “He was sick, and Rose was sick, and it was a terrible week. Other than that week, he never looks sallow.”

“Would you like to talk to Detective Jarvis?” I asked them. “I know he’d appreciate detailed descriptions of those men.”

Mrs. Larabee suddenly gasped. “Oh, my! I just thought of something! What if those men did something bad to Mr. Jones? What will happen if they find out we described them to the police?”

Mrs. Bandini managed to look both stern and noble at the same time. “It will keep them from doing terrible things to other people, if we help to catch them.”