42 Days For Murder

Chapter Seven

Kirby called me at ten the next morning. I answered the phone and he said: “This is John Kirby. How about coming down for a little while?”

I said I could, as soon as I was dressed. He said that was fine and hung up, and Lester rolled over in bed and groaned:

“Who was that?”

I said: “The Chief, is all. Your Mrs. Heber has gone down and lodged a complaint against you.”

He came wide awake. He sat up in bed and said:

“WHAT!”

“Sure! You might have known. You can’t get tough with a woman in this town and get away with it.”

“But Shean! I didn’t do anything.”

“How in hell do you know you didn’t? You were so stiff when you got home I could have propped you up against the wall. That happens lots of times, Lester. A man will do things and not remember them.”

I kept this up while I got dressed and I just about had him believing me by the time I’d finished. He was almost crying by then, and he said, just when I went out:

“Shean, I didn’t do anything. Honest, I didn’t.”

I said: “That’s the beef, you clown,” and slammed the door. It was a shame to ride him but too good a chance to miss.

Kirby wasn’t alone when I got to the station. He had a lantern-jawed, gabled-shouldered man with him whom he introduced as Len Macintosh. He added: “Len’s with the Sheriff, Connell. We work together pretty well.”

I said I was glad to meet Mr. Macintosh, even though I didn’t know whether I meant it or not, and took a seat across the desk from the two of them. Kirby tossed a telegram across to me and said:

“From New York. They get action back there, those boys do. Twenty-four hours for this is all.”

The wire read:

It was signed by somebody in the Identification Bureau. I said: “That’s nice work, Chief. It’s a wonder she wasn’t deported.”

“They don’t deport them that easily,” he said. “Chances are, nobody thought it was worth the bother. D’ya notice that bit about references?”

I said: “That would be a cinch for her. She probably made some connection while she was in the gow. Forged references would be a cinch and the average person doesn’t bother to check them.”

Kirby picked up the phone and called a number. He asked to speak to Mrs. Ruth Wendel, got her after a wait, and asked: “Mrs. Wendel. Did you bother to check your maid’s references before you hired her a year ago? I have a reason for asking.”

There was another wait, then I could hear tinny sounds coming from the phone. Kirby said: “Thank you!” hung up the receiver and told me:

“She says she didn’t bother. That the girl seemed careful and competent and she just didn’t bother.”

I said: “Okey, then you’ve got it. She had fake references. But now you got it what does it mean?”

He said slowly: “It means this. This French maid was a crook. Or at least she’d been one. Maybe some person she’d crossed back in New York followed her out here and knifed her. Maybe she’d had an affair with the knife man back there and the guy followed her. It’s something to go on.”

“I can’t see it,” I argued. “I don’t blame you for passing the buck back to New York but I can’t see it. It’s a local mess, I think.”

“We’ve checked that woman for the time she’s been here and she wasn’t out with a soul. That’s out. She made no contacts that could lead to murder. Isn’t that right, Len?”

Len Macintosh said that was right; that his office had assisted in the check and the Debreaux woman had met no one and had gone out with no one. He reached in his pocket for cigarettes, passed the package to me and said:

“Have one?”

I looked and saw they were Turkish, the kind the young gals smoke when they want to be devilish. I said no, that I always smoked my own kind, and the long lean hungry-looking bird said: “I can’t stand those. I have to have them mild like these. Never smoke any other kind.”

This, with him looking like the breath of the old West, mind you.

Kirby said thoughtfully: “I wanted to tell you this, Connell, because I think Wendel is mixed up with this murder someway. I know you’re in the clear, of course. But I don’t know anything about him.”

I said: “My good God! The poor devil’s nuts about his wife. That’s all that’s the matter with him. He couldn’t have murdered this girl; he was at the same party I was, at the time it happened. You can check it.”

“I have,” Kirby admitted.

Macintosh took a long drag at his cigarette and burst forth. “You’ve backed up my theory, Connell. You admit Wendel loves his wife. Now I say he had an affair with this maid and his wife found it out. That’s why she’s out here divorcing him. So he had this girl killed to keep her quiet; so his wife couldn’t divorce him.”

I laughed and said: “And I suppose the wife would keep the gal on her payroll, knowing her old man was having an affair with her? That won’t hold up. She’d fire her the second she knew it.”

“Maybe she wanted the girl as a witness and kept her along on that account. That holds water, doesn’t it?”

“Now look and remember,” I said. “You saw that girl. She wasn’t pretty. Mrs. Wendell is. I know that a guy will go for a homely girl lots of times, but not this time. Not this guy. This Wendel was no party hound and never was. He ain’t the type to chase women.”

Kirby asked: “How d’ya know that?”

“Joey Free told me. He went to school with Wendel. They’re pals. He told me Wendel was safe and sane at all times.”

Kirby said: “Hell! He’s human, ain’t he. He’s safe and sane like Fourth of July celebrations are. I notice people still get hurt at them. You can’t change human nature.”

I said: “That’s my argument. A play like that wouldn’t be in Wendel’s nature. He’s a dope.”

We argued about it some more and Kirby asked if I’d seen Mrs. Wendel. I said I hadn’t; that I’d made no attempt at seeing her. That I could take a gentle hint without having both shins kicked black and blue. He grinned over at Macintosh and said: “I told you he was half smart.”

Macintosh said: “Or maybe just canny,” and on that note I left.

Breakfast was to be a three-way affair; Lester, Kewpie, and I, so I stopped in the same Rustic Bar for a drink on the way back to the hotel. I had plenty of time and I’d had enough to drink the night before to need one. I got inside and to the bar and told the smug-looking bird behind it what I wanted and happened to look out on the street. There was a Cadillac coupe going by and I could have sworn I saw Joey Free back of the wheel. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, feeling sure that Joey was in the City then, but when I got back to the hotel and Lester said: “Miss Gahagen called and wants you to call her,” I thought maybe something had come up at that end and that Joey had driven up to tell me about it personally.

I got Long Distance, and finally the Gahagan and said:

“This is me. What’s the matter?”

She said: “You told me to call you if anything came up. That’s what I did.”

I could hear her giggle over the phone. “Oh nothing much. Do you remember giving me a check for a hundred dollars to put in your personal account?”

“Sure. Joey Free’s.”

“Well, it bounced. No funds.”

“You’re nuts, Red. He’s good.”

“You’re nuts if you think I’m nuts,” she said. “He may be good but his checks bounced just the same. D’ya want protest it?”

“Hell, no. He’s good, I tell you. There’s some mistake.”

“Well, that’s the reason I called you. How long you going to stay there?”

“I’ve got a job, Red. Maybe forever.”

She laughed and said: “A break for me! You can’t stay longer than six weeks on that expense account. You’ve been up there two days; that leaves you forty more.”

I didn’t get it and said so. She said: “It’s simple. That woman will get her divorce after she’s there six weeks. Forty-two days. I take it that’s what Wendel doesn’t want. He’s not going to pay you after she gets it, is he?”

I said: “This is costing me money,” and hung up. And then called back. I got her in five minutes and said:

“Listen, Red! Call up Joey’s apartment and find out if he’s there. I mean in town. Get it? Then write me a letter about it and send it air mail. I’ll get it in the morning.”

She said she understood.

I told Lester about thinking I’d seen Joey driving by. He put on his thoughtful look and said: “That seems hardly logical, Shean. I mean, after all, with the police chasing him out and all. He’d hardly turn around and come back, would he?”

I said I’d thought of that myself. The telephone rang then and I picked it up, thinking it would be Kewpie calling from the lobby. A very soft, sweet, and feminine voice said:

“Is it you, honey?”

I told her that I wasn’t sure but that it might just possibly be, and the voice froze up and snapped: “I would like to speak to Mr. Lester Hoyt.”

I said to Lester: “It’s your honey.”

He talked and I gathered she was trying to rope him into a car ride, far into the romantic mountains. Where the old hills could look down on young love and so on. I kept snickering and he kept getting redder and redder in the face and his stalling kept getting weaker. Finally I said:

“Tell the old itch-bay you’ll go. What the hell! You only live once and she hasn’t got so many more years.”

He told her he’d meet her in the lobby in twenty minutes, then told me: “You shouldn’t say things like that about her, Shean! She’s really very nice.”

“Sure. I bet she has you carrying matches pretty soon.”

“She’s lonesome. She knows very few people here.”

“Okey, kid! She’s the motherly type, I guess. She’s old enough to be yours.”

He left the room on that one and I decided I’d have a talk with the old gal if I ever got her by herself. After all, I felt responsible for Lester though I couldn’t see much harm in his running around with her as long as he didn’t marry her.

That would be too tough for him. Number four on her list at his age. I believe in anybody getting experience... but not in too big doses.