Wife or Death (12 page)

She hadn't been going to call at all, he thought. Any more than the rest of his friends. Where was the deluge of phone messages he would undoubtedly have received if Angel had died under ordinary circumstances? There hadn't been even a trickle. The truth was, the etiquette books were silent on the proper thing to do when the scuttlebutt had it that your good friend may have murdered his wife. What you did, Denton told himself, was exactly what his friends were doing. You were vocally sympathetic if you happened to run into the rumored uxoricide, but otherwise you made yourself scarce.

Norm Wyatt got busily busy at the bar, and his wife said, “Dad's upstairs showering, Jim. He feels awful about this. I'm so glad you thought of coming to us …”

“I'm really here more as a detective than a newly created widower,” Denton said, sitting down beside Ardis. “Thanks, Norm … Have you heard about George Guest?”

Husband and wife looked puzzled. Wyatt said, “George? What about him?”

“He was killed in an auto accident last night.”

“How awful!” Ardis breathed. “Poor Corinne.”

Wyatt made a sympathetic noise. “How did it happen, Jim?”

“Actually, there's some doubt that it was an accident,” Denton said. “He was following a lead on Angel's murder when he died.”

Ardis's eyes grew wide. “You mean George may have been murdered, too?”

“It's a possibility. I've traced his movements last night to within two blocks of here. When he closed the store at nine P.M., he drove Emmet Taylor—you know, his clerk—home, dropping him off on Sutton Avenue about nine-fifteen. He remarked to Emmet that he had to go somewhere only a couple of blocks from the Taylor house. I wondered if he could have meant your place.”

“Gerald and I were up at the lodge,” Norm Wyatt said. “We spent the night there. Ardis was home, though—”

“All evening,” Ardis said, “and George certainly didn't stop by here. How did it happen, Jim?”

“He ran over an embankment on Rock Hill Road, about three miles west of town.”

“Then why do you say—?”

“Accidents have been known to be faked,” Denton said dryly. “And the fact remains that George's fatal accident was mighty convenient for somebody. As I said, he was following a lead to Angel's murder.”

“What lead?” Wyatt asked eagerly—a shade too eagerly, it struck Denton.

So he shook his head. Airing his wife's infidelities to Augie Spile in Augie's capacity as police chief was one thing; satisfying his friends' curiosity was another. And, after all, he was an amateur at this business. Maybe the best thing to do was to clam up.

“I wish I knew, Norm. And if the police know, they haven't told me. By the way—going back to the night of your party. After the country club. I remember your saying something about driving our eminent D.A. home, Norm. Did you?”

“I sure did,” Wyatt said with a grimace. “And he was one hell of a mess. Got sick all over my car, then I had to spend the rest of the night pouring coffee down his throat, trying to sober him up.”

“You mean at his house?”

“Uh-huh.”

That seemed finally and conclusively to eliminate Ralph Crosby as Angel's murderer, Denton thought, slumping. He immediately sat up straight again. For Ardis Wyatt said, “Poor Norm didn't get home till nearly seven o'clock in the morning.”

“Boy, was I shot,” said her husband.

Did it take four hours to sober up a drunk?

Denton pretended amusement. “You mean to say, Norm, you wasted all that time on that sanctimonious lush?”

Wyatt grinned. “Ever get involved in a good deed? Events come thick and fast. I don't know how many messes I had to clean up—he kept throwing the coffee back at me as fast as I piped it down his throat. Between messes I walked him around—we must have looked like a couple of dancing bears. I even tried giving him a shower, but he wouldn't cooperate enough to let me get him stripped. You'd have thought I was trying to rape him. Anyway, he swung on me, and that's when I decided to hell with our distinguished county prosecutor. I picked him up by the neck and one leg, tossed him onto his bed and went home. Yes, sir, that night just flew by.”

“One ball on top of another, hey, Norm?” Denton laughed and rose. “Well, I'd better get along.” He rose.

“Won't you at least wait for daddy to come down?” Ardis asked. “He'll be awfully disappointed, Jim.” But she rose, too.

And Wyatt already had the door open.

Yes, Denton thought as he drove off, a murder suspect can sure be a trial to his friends.

14

As he drove away from the Wyatts', Denton changed his mind. Instead of stopping by Matthew Fallon's house he decided to make an experiment.

He drove home and into his garage. Here he checked his mileage meter. Then he backed out, turned east and drove out of town.

It was two miles from his house to the town line. Swinging into Ridge Road, he drove just under five miles into the mountains, turned off onto a narrow dirt road, went another five-tenths of a mile and pulled up at the head of a steep upward incline, a rutted lane that angled off the dirt road and led to a low-roofed building of elaborate rustic appearance.

Denton drove into the lane, stopped and looked at his mileage meter.

He had driven, from inside his garage in Ridgemore to where he was now parked, exactly 7.5 miles.

He found Ralph Crosby in Augie Spile's office. This is my lucky day, he thought.

The district attorney's fleshy face darkened at sight of Denton. “Nelson Gerard just phoned me, Denton. What's the idea naming me one of Angel's pallbearers?”

“Why, you were one of my wife's most intimate friends,” Denton smiled. “How would it look if you didn't pay her a last full measure of devotion?”

Crosby's jaws rippled; he was trying hard to hold on to himself. “You seem to be getting a kick out of all this. All right, Denton, you've got me in a bind—I can't back out without causing a lot of talk. But if you think it's going to make an iota of difference, you'd better cook up something stronger. I'm going to prove you killed Angel, and I'm going to see you sizzle for it. Now what do you want?”

“A little action,” Denton said, perching on the corner of Augie Spile's desk. The massive police chief sat quietly behind it, looking from one man to the other. “And, by the way, if I'm going to do all the detective work in this case, don't you think I ought to be put on the city payroll? You see, I don't have the disadvantage of a jealousy-prejudiced mind, Crosby. I
know
I didn't do it, so to me it's simple: It has to be somebody else. Want to hear what I've got?”

Crosby glared at him. Spile said mildly, “Go ahead, Jim.”

“Emmet Taylor—George Guest's clerk at the hardware store—tells me George drove him home from the store last night when they closed up. George dropped Emmet at the Taylor house about nine-fifteen, telling Emmet he had to go somewhere ‘a couple of blocks' from there. The Taylors live on Sutton Avenue in the fourteen-hundred block. I've checked every man who was at the Wyatts' party after the ball, and only two of them live closer than half a mile from the Taylors'. Matt Fallon's place is three blocks away.
The Wyatt house is exactly two
.”

Chief Spile blinked and blinked. Crosby seemed unmoved.

“Not impressed, eh?” Denton grinned. “Well, here's my reconstruction of last night's
Götterdämmerung …
I've talked to the Wyatts this afternoon. Norm says he and his father-in-law spent last night up at Norm's hunting lodge. Ardis, who was home in town all evening, says George didn't show up there. The way I see it, George did drive over to the Wyatt house after dropping Emmet off, but he didn't stop. The Wyatts never seem to close their garage doors—George saw that Norm's car wasn't in the garage, guessed that Norm was up at the lodge,
and drove up there
.”

“If that's a sample of your investigative skill,” the district attorney said, “you'd better stick to newspaper publishing. Are you suggesting, Denton, that Norman Wyatt is responsible for Guest's death? Killed him and rigged it to look like an accident? All from the mere fact that the Taylor house and the Wyatt house are two blocks apart?”

“Well, there's more,” drawled Jim Denton. “I just made an experimental run. It's seven and a half miles on the nose from the inside of my garage to Norman Wyatt's hunting lodge up in the mountains.”

“You jump around like a flea. I don't follow you. What's that supposed to prove?”

Chief Spile looked startled. He said slowly, “Jim told me that the night Angel disappeared—between the time they got home from the Wyatts' and the time he woke up the next morning to find she was gone—somebody had put an extra fifteen miles on his car. Twice seven and a half is fifteen.”

“Oh, so now we're back to Angel's killing—”

“I'm going on the assumption,” Denton retorted, “that they're connected.”

“All right, suppose we play.” District Attorney Crosby smiled thinly. “The night she disappeared, Angel drove up to the Wyatt lodge and back. Why would she do that, Denton?”

“I don't know that Angel drove up and back. It's likelier that she drove up and somebody else drove my car back figuring I'd never know the difference.”

Crosby shook his head. “I've never heard such bellywash in my life.”

“Oh, bear with me,” Denton said. “You don't seem to mind bellywash when it's washing me. Look, Crosby. Norman Wyatt drove you home from his place on the night of the party, the night Angel probably got it. Ardis Wyatt told me just today that Norm didn't get back, presumably from tucking you in, till nearly seven A.M. She said that in front of Norm, incidentally, and he didn't deny it.

“What I'm suggesting is that Norm may have used your fried condition as an excuse to get away that night. He put you to bed in your place, then drove up to his hunting lodge, where Angel was waiting for him—she'd driven up there to meet him.”

“That accounts for half the fifteen miles. How did your car get back? Who drove it?”

“I don't know. Do I have to do it all? Do you remember what time Wyatt left your house?”

The district attorney flushed.

“Well, do you?”

Crosby was silent.

“Crosby, listen to me,” Denton said. “Half this town thinks maybe I murdered my wife. The other half is positive. I don't give a damn if you get falling-down drunk seven nights a week. All I'm interested in is clearing myself of suspicion of murder. And right now I'm offering you another suspect. Can you alibi him?”

“Why the devil,” muttered Ralph Crosby, “would Norman Wyatt murder Angel?”

“She'd just picked herself a new boy,” Denton said. “Remember? You ought to, because that's when she gave you the gate—that night she disappeared, leaving me a note in which she said she was leaving me. In view of my late wife's character, it's inconceivable that she'd have run off by herself—it had to be with a man. Obviously, it was your successor. I've just shown you that he might well have been Norman Wyatt—who had probably filled her full of a lot of moonshine about divorcing Ardis and marrying her, not meaning a syllable of it, and then found himself under pressure, with no out but to murder her.”

“It's all built on air,” the district attorney jeered, but the jeer sounded forced. “Even that note. The only evidence that the note existed is your word. And that's no evidence.”

“I know,” Denton said, “I know. That's what comes of hiring an overzealous cleaning woman. But you didn't answer my question, Crosby. Can you alibi Norman Wyatt?”

Crosby mumbled, “Well, I do remember him pouring coffee into me.”

“That's a help, that is. How long was he with you?”

Crosby exploded. “All right, I don't know! I was drunker than I've ever been in my life. He might have been with me ten minutes or all night. I didn't wake up till two P.M.”

Denton glanced at Chief Spile. “Add another suspect to your list, Augie.”

But the chief was frowning. “There's a hole in your theory, Jim, if the same man was responsible for both deaths. You say Norm Wyatt and Mr. Trevor were together at the lodge last night. Is it likely Norm would have murdered George Guest in front of his own father-in-law?”

Denton made an impatient gesture. “We don't know the circumstances. Maybe the old boy is a heavy sleeper or Norm slipped a couple of sleeping pills in his nightcap. That would make it possible for Norm to kill George and get his body away from the lodge and over that embankment without Gerald Trevor knowing a damn thing about it. Or a dozen other maybes! At least it's worth looking into, isn't it?”

“I s'pose.” It was obvious that Augie Spile did not relish the prospect of questioning Ridgemore's most famous native. Then the fat man seemed to perk up. “Say, if Matt Fallon lives only three blocks from the Taylors, did you check how far it is from Fallon's house to your house?”

“You mean in line with that seven-and-a-half-mile drive business?” Denton stared at him. “Are you kidding? It can't be over two or three miles, Augie.”

“Just a thought,” Spile said uncomfortably. “Anyway, it can't hurt. I mean, before I bother Norm, to check Matt Fallon's alibi for that night.”

Denton shrugged. “I agree it can't hurt. When, Augie?”

“Not much point till we get the post mortem on George. If the pathologist says it couldn't be murder, why stir up a fuss? It can wait till Monday.”

Denton gave up. He knew any attempt to push Chief Spile would be wasted effort. Augie would go about his job in his own cautious way, respecting sacred cows, unmoved by logic.

“I'll stop by Monday, then,” Denton said. “See you at the funeral, Crosby.”