Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 16

After coming across what might turn out to be a money trail, Ovid Knox’s interest in the late Dave Laney’s sudden wealth increased sharply. “How much cash did he dump on the bed, Miss Carver?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on. Dave’s passed out. The money’s just lying there. He’s snoring. You’re all packed. The cab’s on the way. But there’s plenty of time for a fast count. So how much was there, Miss Carver?”

“Fifty-four thousand and I prefer ‘Hey, you’ to Miss Carver.”

“What’d Dave call you?”

“Jessie, honey or bitch — depending on his mood.”

“How much did he owe you?”

“Around four thousand dollars.”

“And you didn’t collect any? I would’ve.”

“That could be because you’re not into conceptual thinking. Let’s say Dave was given the money to make a dope buy. His reputation won’t suffer if I reveal he did that now and then. And let’s say the dope buy’s for sixty thousand, but Dave’s already blown six. If I’d ‘collected,’ as you call it, what he owed me, four thousand bucks, that would’ve left him ten thousand short, which is a lot of money in Mexico. And if you short a Mexican dope jefe that much, you can get yourself killed. That’s why I neither collected nor stole any of Dave’s money, if it was his, which I very much doubt.”

“That was a nice little self-exculpatory talk based on supposition,” Knox said. “What I want are details. I don’t care how trivial.”

“Okay. Trivial details. The taxi came. A Volkswagen. I gave the kid who drove me to the airport twelve American dollars, which is about two-thirds of what he said his usual daily take is. When I got to LAX I had thirty-four bucks left. I blew twenty-four on a cab. My net worth is now four dollars and change and I’d appreciate it very much, fella, if you’d get the fuck off my back.”

Knox’s face went still. Nothing moved. His color remained the same light tan and Partain diagnosed the utter stillness as anger, certainly not embarrassment. The amusement in Knox’s blue eyes had either died or gone away as he leaned toward Jessica Carver and perhaps would have yelled something at her, a threat or a warning, if Partain hadn’t said, “I’d like to ask her a couple of questions.”

Knox leaned back, his face again relaxed as the amusement in his eyes rekindled itself. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

Partain arranged himself into a nonthreatening posture by resting his right elbow on a walnut side table and cupping his chin in his right palm. It made him look both slightly interested and slightly bored.

“You took a morning flight out of Guadalajara,” he said, making it sound more like an offhand statement than a question.

She nodded.

“Long flight?”

“Three hours and something.”

“You arrived at LAX around one or two?”

She nodded again.

“Who was on the door downstairs, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“He let you in?”

“Sure. And offered to carry my bag up.”

“You let him?”

“It was heavy and I was tired.”

“You tip him?”

“Five dollars — which is why I’m down to four dollars and change.”

“Then what?”

“You mean after Tom left? Well, I dumped the bag on the bed, poured a double vodka on the rocks and drank it while the tub filled. I don’t remember how long my bath was. Maybe forty-five minutes. Maybe more. Then I took a long, long nap, woke up hungry and was heading for the kitchen when you materialized in the living room and threw your bag at me.”

“What bag?” Knox said.

“I told Mr. Partain not to move or I’d shoot. He spun around like a top and let go his leather carry-on. It hit me in the stomach and knocked the breath out of me.”

“What about the gun?” Knox said.

“There wasn’t any gun,” Carver said. “I lied.”

“What’d Partain do then?”

“He cooked us dinner,” Jessica Carver said.

It was 3:32 A.M. when Ovid Knox finally left and nearly 4 A.M.when Jessica Carver rose, yawned, and said she was going to bed.

After she left, Millicent Altford said, “You outwaited her.”

“I have to ask some questions,” Partain said.

“I can’t sleep anyhow so go ahead and ask.”

“This may sound personal but it’s not. What’s your birthday?”

“That’s sure no secret. July seventeenth, nineteen-thirty.”

“You know your Social Security number?”

She rattled it off. “Four-four-eight — eighteen — thirty-four twenty-five.”

“A hundred dollars says the combination to your safe is either seven seventeen thirty or forty-four eight eighteen.”

“No bet,” she said.

“Which one?”

“My birthday. Seven right, seventeen left, nineteen right, thirty left. I changed the combination after the horse was stolen, but I haven’t memorized the new numbers because there’s not much point.”

“That money you showed me in Santa Paula,” Partain said. “What about it?”

“I was sitting here, half listening to Knox, when it occurred to me that what you showed me could’ve been a flash bundle. One-hundred-dollar bills on top of bound packets of plain paper. Or maybe even dollar bills underneath, if you wanted to run the de luxe model by me.”

“I offered to let you count it.”

“What if I said let’s go back up there tomorrow and count it together?”

“Swell. Let’s go. Now do I get to ask what the hell you’re getting at?”

“I’m getting at the ‘just in case,’ ” he said. “That was your reason for taking me up to Santa Paula: in case something happened to you, there’d be somebody who knew about the damp money.”

“It’s damn well bone-dry by now.”

“But it was almost as if you had a premonition that somebody’d try to kill you. Or was it more than premonition — say a real honest-to-God threat, which is why you hired me in the first place?”

“No premonition. No threat. Just logic. Somebody stole one-point-two million dollars of nonexistent invisible money. Money I couldn’t even report stolen. I believe the thief knew that. In fact, nobody to this day knows it was stolen except you, me and the thief. Or thieves. That’s why I decided I needed a just-in-case witness — somebody who’d go after both the money and the thief if something happened to me like being smothered to death with a pillow.”

“You have a will made out?” Partain said.

“Everything goes to Jessie.”

“And Jessie’s broke.”

She frowned at him, although it was really more glower than frown, but then a merry grin erased it and she said, “Nice try. Hell, it wasn’t just nice, it was almost elegant. Jessie and Dave are broke in Guadalajara, right?”

Partain nodded, barely smiling.

“Dave wakes up one morning with his usual hangover and asks Jessie how much her mama’s worth, and Jessie says she doesn’t know exactly, but maybe a million or two. So Dave says, Honey, why don’t we run up to L.A. and kill Mama and make it look like somebody else did it? Well, Jessie thinks inheriting all of Mama’s money right away is a real fine idea. So they fly up here, but not together, and Jessie finds you in residence.”

“I got here after she did,” Partain said.

“Details,” Altford said. “Meantime, Dave gets a bit smashed, develops a case of cold feet and needs to talk to Jessie. But you’re in the way. Then you and I traipse off to Santa Paula to admire the invisible money while Jessie and Dave plot and plan. How’s that sound?”

“Slick,” Partain said.

“Okay. Dave gets hold of some doctor clothes, sneaks into my hospital room and tries to smother me but botches the job. He calls Jessie from a pay phone on the corner and she says, ‘Don’t worry, darlin’, just wait right there on the corner and some friends of mine in a brown van’ll come by and pick you up.’ Sure enough, the van arrives, Dave hops in, they dump him out dead in my driveway and poor Jessie’s net worth is still only four bucks and change.”

Partain grinned. “I like it — even if it didn’t happen.”

“The part about Dave happened. The part where he died.”

“Let’s go back to the safe’s combination. Who else knew it?”

“Just Jessie and me.”

“Did she write it down or memorize it?”

Altford frowned, trying to remember. “She wrote it down on some-thing — I remember now, on her driver’s license so she wouldn’t lose it.”

“Your birthday?”

“Who remembers Mama’s birthday?”

“Then Dave could’ve accidentally run across it.”

“It wouldn’t have been an accident.”

“Probably not,” Partain said, paused, then asked, “You discovered the money was missing the day after the election.”

She nodded. “November fourth.”

“Where were you the evening and night of the election?”

“After wandering for twelve years in the political wilderness? Out celebrating.”

“Had a drink or two, I imagine.”

“Five or six.”

“Get home late?”

“Very late. About three A.M.”

“Fall into bed?”

“Managed to get my clothes off first.”

“Then Dave could’ve flown in that afternoon or evening, opened the safe anytime after one A.M. when Jack, the night man, got off, then been back in Guadalajara by midmorning, noon at the latest, before anyone knew he was gone.”

“Then where’s my one-point-two million?”

“What’s five percent of that?” Partain said.

The number came first, followed instantly by rage. “Sixty thousand dollars — just about what he dumped on Jessie’s bed. The son of a bitch stole my money on commission, then mooched off my daughter. What a piece of shit.”

Partain merely nodded and said, “You ever give Jessie a key card to the building and your place here?”

“When I first moved in. Sometimes she’d stay a weekend or even a month, if she was between jobs. But three or four months ago she wrote she’d lost it and told me to get the locks changed or whatever they do when a key card’s lost. I just never got around to it.”

Partain reached into his pocket and brought out the key card he’d removed from the dead Dave Laney’s mouth. Altford stared at it for a moment, then asked, “Where’d you get that?”

“Somebody stuck it in Dave’s mouth.”

“What’s it supposed to be — a threat? A warning? A curse?”

“It’s supposed to make you worry about what it is.”

“What I need to know is who the fuck put Dave up to it? Who talked him into stealing one million two hundred thousand dollars for a lousy five percent commission?”

“Someone who wanted the money, knew about it and had a total lock on Dave.”

“Okay. You’re my security wizard. What do I do now?”

“Call in reinforcements.”

“Aw, hell, Partain. Who?”

“Your old flame, General Winfield.”

“Why? I mean, why him?”

“Because he’s a preeminent authority on Major General Walker Hudson.”

“What’s a serving Army general got to do with me and my money?”

“For one thing, he’s Dave’s uncle. For another, he’s the guy I beat the shit out of down in El Salvador.”