Exploit of Death

TEN

HACKETT, HHIGGINS, and Palliser confronted the Daggetts and Helen Garvey in Mendoza's office; there wasn't space for all of them in one of the interrogation rooms. The two women were silent and Daggett tried to bluster. Higgins said, "We've spelled it out for you, Daggett. Now we can prove you've all been lying. We've got legal proof of who the girl really was. That she hadn't been living in that apartment-that her name wasn't Ruth Hoffman-and now we'd like to hear what you know about it. Who primed you with that story?"

Daggett's Adam's apple was jerking wildly. He said, "I don't know anything about it. Not a thing. Just what I told you."

"Don't waste time trying to deny it," said Hackett. "How did the girl get there and when? Who told you what lies to tell?"

Daggett looked at his wife and he looked like a frightened rabbit cornered by hounds. "We never did anything to that girl. We don't know anything about that girl."

"So what do you know about?" asked Palliser.

Daggett shifted in the chair, still looking at his wife. "We never wanted to get into any trouble-"

"Well, you're in a hell of a lot of trouble now," said Higgins brutally. "You'll have to tell us about it sometime, and it had better be here and now."

The woman said evenly, "I guess we better tell them, Fred. I thought we put it over-even when that other one asked questions. But I guess we'll have to tell them the rights of it now."

He licked his lips. "Well," he said, "it was the money. I told you that building's going to be torn down and I'll be out of a job. I'm fifty-seven years old and it won't be easy to get another. I worked around a lot-construction and clerking in stores-but it won't be easy to find any kind of decent job at my age. I managed that apartment for ten years, we get the place rent free. But it's coming down. They're gonna build a big office building there. The land belongs to some big company, they couldn't care less about the likes of me, and we've been worried about it. I've been damn worried about it. It was around the first of August I got the phone call." He was hunched forward, clasped hands between his knees, head down. "And I can't tell you anything about the guy. I never laid eyes on him. It was just a voice on the phone-an ordinary voice. He asked me if the wife and me would like to earn ten thousand bucks each. We wouldn't have to do much, he said. Just tell a little story to the police. I didn't like the idea of police being in it. I never had anything to do with the police, but they can be nosy- and when he said what we'd have to do, I didn't like that so good either. But he said there couldn't be any trouble, the police would only come once and they'd believe what we said because there'd be things to back it up so the police would believe us. He said he'd let us think it over and call me back. Well, the wife and I talked it over and decided to do it-for the money. But I thought about Helen, see. She and Ethel been pretty good friends, time we'd been here, and I know things hadn't been easy for her either. And I thought it'd look better if somebody else was to back us up on that story. We talked it all over and when he called back I put it to him. I said Helen'd back us up for another ten thousand, and he said that was O.K."

Hackett said, "Not so much money for a thing like that, was it? With a dead body involved."

Mrs. Daggett looked at him almost contemptuously. She was a short fat woman with sandy blond hair and hard pale blue eyes, a small tight mouth. "Mister," she said, "I don't I know how old you are or how much you make at this job, but sooner or later you'll find out like the rest of us, in this life, it's dog eat dog. You got to look out for yourself first. Sure it was a little risk to take. But we figured it was worth it for the money, and so did Helen." Helen Garvey was sitting silent, her much-made-up face gaunt in the bright sunlight pouring in the window. "The fellow told Fred just what was going to be in that apartment. There'd be things to make the story look on the level."

Daggett said, "He told me just what I had to do. All I had l to do was just what he said. He didn't know exactly when it would be, but he'd let me know beforehand. He said I was to tell him the number of the apartment. Well, that was easy. People moving out the last three months-not five tenants left in the place, and Helen was the only one left on that floor, so I told him the one opposite her. He said when he called I was just to leave the key in the door and the only thing I had to do, make out rent receipts like the Hoffman girl had been living there. Leave the top ones in the apartment and have the carbons ready to show the police, and the next morning I was supposed to go up there and call the police and say how I'd found her."

"You all knew you were getting mixed up in a murder, didn't you?" asked Higgins.

"You can't say any such thing! We never-how'd we know that?"

"When the fellow told you a month in advance," said Hackett, "that there was going to be a dead body in that apartment? You're not that much of a fool, Daggett."

He looked wildly from side to side. "I didn't want to know anything about it-it wasn't anything to do with me-with us. I didn't want to think about it."

His wife said, "We'd never have taken the risk except it looked like he had it all set up so the police wouldn't think it was a lie. Well, we lost the gamble, that's all."

Palliser asked, "And what happened next?"

"We had to be sure he'd pay up. He sounded like he meant business all right, and even before I asked him he said he'd pay us half first. The money came in the mail. It was a little package came by first-class mail and it was all cash- all in twenties. Fifteen thousand dollars. I never heard from him again until just the night before. He called and said we should get ready-to do it-the next morning. I-right then, I'd have liked to back out of the whole deal. I hadn't really thought about-about the body, but we were in it then-and I said O.K." He took a deep breath. "And he said, leave the key in the door and leave your own door shut-just sit and watch the T.V."

"And that was what you did?" said Palliser.

Daggett nodded. "And next morning I went up there. It was all just like he said it'd be, and the rest of the money was there on the table-another fifteen thousand in twenties. So I just did what he said to. We all did."

Higgins said, "You know you've laid yourselves open to a charge of accessories to a murder, don't you? That's what I it adds up to. Is that all you can tell us about him?"

"We don't know anything about a murder. I never laid eyes on him. That's all I can tell you. Just a voice on the phone. We never knew anything about that girl. You can't say we knew nothing about a murder. It was just a chance to make all that money. It didn't seem much to do for that much money."

Hackett said, "It's put you in one hell of a lot of trouble, Daggett. You're all going to jail and the money won't do you much good there." Mendoza had predicted something like this, but it was unsatisfactory. It left the thing still shapeless. They talked it over a little after they'd booked the Daggetts and Garvey into jail. There had, of course, been an inquest on the supposed Ruth Hoffman, and at Mendoza's request the coroner had instructed the jury to leave it open. Now it was to be hoped that he had enough further evidence to conclude the inquest with a verdict of murder. He hadn't said when he'd be back. He might be on the way now.

Robert Shafton said to Landers and Galeano, "This neighborhood's run down in the last twenty years. It was convenient to my business. But nearly anywhere in the city these days you get all sorts of crime-the violence. We bought the house on Scott Avenue twenty-five years ago, it was handy to the store, but we'd like to get out of the area now. Only who can afford the interest rates? Any other place we'd get, we'd have to get a loan on. And nearly anywhere these days-" He spread his hands. They were talking to him at his store on Glendale Avenue. It was a stationer's and office-supply store, a fairly big place. He had this little office at the rear of the store, and there was a woman clerk in front.

"We talked to the patrolman," said Landers, "but we'd like to hear what you can tell us, Mr. Shafton."

"Certainly," said Shafton. He was a short spare man with gray hair and glasses. "I'd been home for lunch. I like to get a little exercise, and it's only six blocks to the store- I usually walk. I was on Scott Avenue-about halfway up the block from Glendale, and this woman was ahead of me- almost at the corner. There wasn't anybody else on the street. She seemed to be having trouble getting along- walking very slowly and bent over, and I was just wondering if she was ill or perhaps drunk when it happened. These two-well, I don't know whether to call them men or boys- I'd say they were around seventeen or eighteen, but both pretty husky. They came around the corner from Glendale Avenue and saw the woman,. and just-well-tackled her.

One of them knocked her down and the other one grabbed her handbag and they ran back up Glendale Avenue. It happened so fast I couldn't have done a thing, I wasn't close enough. Not that I could have done much-they were both bigger than me."

"You might have got clobbered too," said Galeano.

"I went up and looked at her. I saw she was quite elderly and looked as if she was badly hurt. She'd hit her head on the sidewalk. So I went up to the corner where there's a public phone and called the police and an ambulance."

"Would you recognize either of those two? Can you give us a description?" asked Landers.

"They were just the typical young louts you see around. Long hair, jeans, sweatshirts- I think they both had dark hair, but that's really all I can say. Was that ambulance attendant right-that she was dead? The patrolman thought so."

"Yes, I'm afraid she was," said Galeano.

They had talked to the uniformed man, who had one piece of information for them. The woman's handbag had been gone, of course, but she'd been wearing an identification bracelet with a name and address stamped on it and he had noted it down. Phillips, an address on Morton Avenue. They went to look there, to notify any relatives. It was a small apartment building, not new, but well maintained with a strip of lawn in front. There wasn't a manager, and they tried the first right front apartment downstairs. A woman about thirty said they'd just moved there, didn't know any of the other tenants. Nobody else was home downstairs. They climbed stairs, tried the first right-hand door there. The woman who opened it said, "Phillips?" She was stout and henna-haired. "She lives right across the hall." She was shocked to hear what had happened. "Well, I don't know about any relatives. There was some woman came to see her nearly every day, I'd meet her in the hall sometimes, I don't know who she is. Of course you want to find out. I wonder if the door's locked. She hardly ever went out, I don't think." She stepped across the hall and tried the door, and it was unlocked. "There. I expect there'll be something inside to tell you about any family," she said brightly.

Landers shut the door on her with thanks and they looked around. It was a typical place for its age and for the area. The neutral upholstered furniture, everything orderly, the kitchen clean. The phone was on one of the end tables by the couch and taped just above the dial was a neat card with firm printing on it: GREGSON and a phone number-NURSE and another number. Landers sat down on the couch and tried the first number. On the sound ring a masculine voice answered. "Mr. Gregson? This is the police. I believe you know a Mrs. Phillips on Morton Avenue. I'm sorry to have to tell you she's met with an accident-Yes, sir, I'm afraid she's dead. We're at the apartment, sir, yes. If you could tell us about any relatives-"

He said, "Yes, I can tell you. I'll come as soon as I can get there."

He came half an hour later. He was a tall elderly man, once very handsome and still good-looking, with a thick crop of gray hair and steady blue eyes. He was wearing neat sports clothes. He sat down on the couch and listened to Landers' account and said heavily, "Oh, my God. What a terrible way for her to die. I hope it was quick for her-that she hadn't time to be frightened. I'm so very sorry."

"You're a relative, sir?" asked Galeano. "There has to be an autopsy. You'll be notified when you can claim the body."

"Yes, there'll have to be a funeral. I'll see to it. No, not a relative." He lit a cigarette and sat back with a little sigh.

"No, but I've known her for a long time. She was eighty-five. It had been nearly fifty years. I was-responsible for her, you could say. It's queer the way things happen. You don't know who she was. Neither of you is old enough to recognize the name. Isabel Page. She was a big star in the twenties, the thirties, up to the war. She was a beautiful woman. She made a lot of big money and she spent it. Those days the income tax wasn't so high. The house in Beverly Hills, the cars, the parties. I was her butler." He laughed ruefully. "Life's a queer proposition. I'd started out to try to make it in show business too, but we found it was a hell of a lot steadier work to take the servants' jobs. I was her butler and my wife was her housekeeper. She was a good woman-a silly woman some ways-sentimental, but very generous and warmhearted. Too much so. She was married four times and all four of them took her for a bundle, but it was the last one, Phillips, who cleaned her out. That was twenty-five years ago. We'd been with her for seventeen years." He was smoking quietly, his eyes vacant on the past. "Such a childlike person she was. How often she'd get in some muddle and then it'd be, But you'll fix it for me, Gregson-and I usually could-until the very last."

"What happened?" asked Galeano.

"You see, we could never forget her kindness to Enid. My wife. She contracted polio, and you know back then they didn't know much about it, couldn't do much. And nobody had medical insurance then. Isabel Page paid for everything. Enid was in the hospital for weeks, and there were specialists, the private nurses. You might say that it was nothing to her, she had the money. But it wasn't just a gesture-she was a very warmhearted woman-genuinely concerned. We both feel it was all the expensive attention and care that pulled Enid through-though it left her with a slight limp. And then, Miss Page let us keep our little girl at the house. A good many people wealthy enough to have live-in servants won't be bothered with children, but she didn't mind. She was always so kind to Doreen too, Christmas and birthday presents. We were with her up to the end. Phillips cleaned her out, he'd tried to manage the money she had left and lost all of it. She never had any judgement about people, of course. All there was left after he took off with some floozy was the house in Beverly Hills. I sold that for her- got a hundred and fifty thousand. God, it'd go for a million now. And I put it into some solid stock, she could live on the income in a modest way. I had another job with one of the big producers up to when I retired five years ago. But the last ten years, all this damned inflation-" He put out his cigarette. "Well, I'd saved and made some sound investments, rental property, and Enid and I are O.K. I couldn't afford to keep her in luxury, but I could pay the I rent here. Only just lately it's been worrying, the way she was going. She'd been failing the last couple of years-up to then she could look after herself fairly well. One of these visiting nurses came in every day, saw she had a bath and a hot meal. But I was afraid she'd have to go into a nursing home, just lately she'd taken to getting out and wandering all over-the reason I got that I.D. bracelet for her. She wanted to go home, you see-to the house in Beverly Hills. She was trying to get home. Well, it's finished. A terrible way for her to go. I hope she hadn't time to be frightened."

"You'll be notified about the body," said Landers. "It was very good of you to look after her like that, Mr. Gregson."

He had stood up. He looked at Landers with a little surprise. "I don't see it quite like that," he said. "We have to pay our debts, you know."

Mendoza got home on Wednesday afternoon. When the cab let him off at the door of the big Spanish house, he handed over the exorbitant fare and a tip and carried his bag into the house, into the blessed air-conditioning. It wasn't as hot as when he had left, but the air conditioning was still welcome. He found Alison in the living room, curled up in an armchair reading, and she scrambled up in surprise, scattering cats. "Luis, we didn't know when to expect you."

When she emerged from his embrace she added, "You look tired to death, querido."

"Jet lag," said Mendoza. "I want a shower and shave and there's time to get down to the office-"

"Time to go nowhere," said Alison. "You're going to lie down for the rest of the afternoon and get some sleep. You're not as young as you were, and you know you're exhausted. I suppose you went to the Folies Bergere every night to whistle at all the lovelies." He followed her meekly up the stairs, yawning his head off. He wasn't sorry to be overruled.

So it wasn't until Thursday morning that he sat at his desk with Higgins, Hackett, Palliser gathered around him, Hackett missing another day off, and said, "So, Paul Goulart, the fiance, got himself murdered too. And it could have been a coincidence-the crime rate's up in Paris too-but I don't think so and neither does Rambeau. Goulart was on a late shift at the hospital and would get home at his apartment about midnight. It looked as if he'd surprised a burglar. The place was ransacked and he was stabbed. The door had apparently been jimmied opened with a chisel or something, but the lock wasn't broken. There was a good solid deadbolt. What the detective on the case thought, and what I think, was that somebody was waiting for him. Went in with him on some excuse and set up the burglary. He wasn't known to have any, in the melodramatic word, enemies. No trouble with anyone recently. But Goulart!" said Mendoza. "Of all the people who knew her, Goulart would never have rested until he located Juliette. He wouldn't have been fobbed off with any polite excuses from the French police or us. And there was no address book in that apartment, and that's an item the burglar seldom bothers with?Como no! And he must have known Grandfather's address. He's the one who would have had it, damn it."

"I'm following you," said Hackett cautiously. "But-"

Mendoza impatiently lit a cigarette from the stub of his old one. "Iook at it. Just look at the probabilities. What would happen when Juliette didn't come home from America? The Ducasse girl is all wrapped up in a new marriage, and living in another town. I doubt that she'd have Grandfather's address. Juliette was only going to be gone for three weeks, a month. The Ducasse girl would expect to hear from her, she'd be surprised when she didn't. She'd write to the Paris address. Eventually, she might contact the Boyer woman, and she'd have been surprised and worried at not hearing too. But what would they do? How soon? By December the lease would be up on that apartment, but the rent would have been overdue before then, and sooner or later the managers would go in, find personal possessions, assume she'd decamped. Theirs not to reason why. I doubt if they'd take the trouble to look at her accumulated mail. Take Goulart's father. He liked the girl very much, but when she didn't contact him when she was supposed to be back, what would he think? Put her down as a heartless female not worthy of Paul. But Goulart! A young, energetic man with some standing-he'd have been a tiger after her when she didn't come home. He was in love with the girl, he knew where she was going. He'd have moved heaven and earth to find out what had happened to her. Goulart was the key. If Juliette was to vanish quietly away, he had to go. However, he had to be disposed of."

"I see it," said Higgins. "But, my God, Luis. Talk about a wholesale operation-"

"Her other friends, and she probably had a lot of them, mostly middle-class working girls like herself, they'd wonder and speculate. They wouldn't do anything. And if in December or January or February Mrs. Boyer did contact the French police and they contacted us, what is there to find? She landed at International that day and-as Mr. Shakespeare puts it, the rest is silence."

Mendoza laughed and leaned back in his desk chair. "So everybody is at a dead end. She had a visitor's permit, good for six months. Muy bien. Immigration isn't going to send out the troops looking for her. But Goulart, that was a different breed of cat, compadres. They had to get rid of Goulart." He brooded over his cigarette. "He was killed on the Monday night, after Juliette landed here on Saturday. Somebody had been busy. They had to get her keys, possibly her address book if she brought it with her, for Goulart's address. Somebody started for France that Saturday night. They'd know her address from her letters, of course. Somebody cleared that apartment of anything personal-Grandfather's letters, other letters. And if the address book was there-that, and any list of phone numbers. And somebody set up a little ambush for Goulart."

"And," said Palliser. "Another thing you can deduce. If the Boyer woman or the Ducasse girl had done anything, what would they do? Go to Goulart."

" Exactamente. He had to go. And that was just the way. it's been at this end-simple and yet-mmh-cunning. Rudimentary, but very damned thorough. And money and lives no object."

"For God's sake, what could be behind it?" said Higgins.

"Elias K. Dobbs," said Hackett. "Another common name. We can start out with the phone books and city directories."

"It would probably have worked out as smooth as cream," said Mendoza, "if I hadn't seen the corpse. Oh, such a nice little plan. And executed so damn smoothly too."

"Why?" wondered Palliser.

"And we still don't know," said Mendoza.

"The phone book," said Hackett.

There were six phone books covering the county. This one had been a bastard to work all the way. Dobbs wasn't as common a name as Smith or Brown, but common enough. And there were a hundred or more in each of the books, even just looking for the initials. And of course the number might be unlisted. They started to work on it, on four books. That was at eleven o'clock, and at noon a bank job went down at a Bank of America on Beverly. Everybody else was out hunting heisters and there'd be dozen of witnesses to question. They all went out on that, and what with talking to the witnesses and taking statements, it occupied the rest of the day.

THE NIGHT WATCH had only one call, but it was a homicide. And it would likely give the day boys some more legwork to do. Conway went out to look at it. The uniformed man was waiting for him with a civilian in front of a little old single-frame house on San Marino Street. The civilian was a middle-aged man, sitting on the front steps with his head in his hands. His name was Richard Scoggins. He said to Conway numbly, "We were worried when she didn't answer the phone. My mother. She's nearly eighty and pretty frail. We usually phoned to check on her every day. We didn't like her living alone down here but of course she owned the house. My wife couldn't get her all day. I thought I'd better check. Of course I've got a key to the house-and when I saw-" He put his head in his hands again. The old lady was lying on the floor of the bedroom. It looked as if she'd been strangled. There were a few drawers pulled out, an old jewelry box on the dressing table was empty with its lid open. Conway sent the patrolman back on tour after he'd called the lab and while he waited looked I through the rest of the house. He told Scoggins that later they'd want him to look and see what was missing here, and Scoggins just nodded silently. It didn't look to Conway as if the back or front doors had been forced, or any of the windows. But that was the lab's business. Let them get on with it. He went back to the office to write the initial report.

MENDOZA SWORE over the night report. It was Galeano's day off. They were still taking statements from the witnesses on the bank job and now they had this damned homicide to work. And all the damned phone books- He got Jason Grace to get back on that with him. The first thing they had checked on had been unlisted numbers and no Elias K. Dobbs or any E. Dobbs in the county had one. There wasn't an Elias Dobbs listed in any of the six books, but there were at least a hundred and fifty E. Dobbses.

"There's an easier way to do it, you know," said Grace reasonably.

Mendoza said savagely, "Hands off the phone, Jase! Grandfather's part of this damn thing and I don't want to set off the alarm on him. ?Dios! We'll have to take a personal look at every one of these damned Dobbses, and whoever pulled this off may be damned canny and crafty but I'll take a bet that when we find Grandfather and let him know that we've connected him with Juliette he'll be surprised enough to show it."

"Yes, I see what you mean," said Grace. They set to work to compile a list of possible Grandfathers. And adding insult to injury, they were all over the damn county. There'd be mileage piled up on all their cars, and the only consolation was that the heat wave seemed to be dying a natural death.

Then Lake buzzed him and said there were a couple of Feds to see him, and Mendoza snarled. "And what the hell do you want?" he asked the two big men who came in.

"Well, this bank job yesterday-"

"If it's any of your business," said Mendoza. Time was the bank jobs had belonged exclusively to the Feds, but these days they were left up to the locals.

"Now don't be so goddamned touchy, Mendoza. We're just offering some friendly help," said the other Fed mildly. "We got the word from a snitch up in Hollywood. Norm and I have been on a big Narco case, there's some bunch bringing the stuff in from Mexico pretty damn wholesale. We've been sniffing around on it for a couple of months, and the snitch, who's a former pusher just out on P.A., is evidently carrying a grudge. He tells us that job was pulled by Angelo Morales and Tony Montez because they needed the bread to make a payment on a new shipment."

" Por Dios," said Mendoza. "There were two men-both Latins by the witnesses."

"Well, there you are," said the Fed. "By what the pusher said, he got it on the grapevine that Morales dumped a bundle at draw somewhere, and it was the stake for the shipment."

" Es que ya me canso de las estupideces. I do get so damn tired of all these stupidities. All right. Thank you both so much. We'll look into it."

"We're just trying to be helpful," said the first one plaintively. When they had left, Mendoza went out to see who was in. Landers had just come back and Mendoza passed the information on.

"You'd better check with Records- I assume they've both got pedigrees-and see what comes of it."

"Oh, hell," said Landers. "More legwork."

After lunch Mendoza and Grace started out separately to look at Dobbses, but with all the driving, they only got to four between them that afternoon and none of them was Grandfather.

But Mendoza had spent awhile poring over the County Guide before he left the office, and on Sunday morning as he left the house on the hill he didn't turn left to hit the east on-ramp of the Golden State Freeway, the other way for the west on-ramp. Nine o'clock found him on a narrow black-top road some little way north of the town of San Fernando, and heading north. Behind him was the teeming, crowded San Fernando Valley, one big city sprawl these last twenty-five years. But up here it was all empty land. Gentle bare little hills burned brown by the sun, a few scrub-oak trees. He drove slowly around the various windings of Lopez Canyon Road and nearly missed the little sign off to the right that said INDIAN CANYON ROAD. That was even narrower and led him northeast past more bare land. About half a mile up on the right was a house with a FOR SALE sign on it. A quarter mile farther on the left was another house, or, he amended, to himself, what had been one. Nobody had lived in it for a long time. It had been a square frame house but the roof had fallen in and the front porch was broken. There was a post which had held a mailbox in front and the remains of the mailbox lying alongside it. The post office hadn't delivered any mail here for years. Mendoza parked the Ferrari on the shoulder, went back and looked at the mailbox. There was no lettering visible on the uppermost side, but when he turned it over with one foot, just decipherable were the remains of a few once-white-painted letters.

E-D-BS.

" Alla va, " he said to himself. He turned the car and went back down the hill to the other house. It had been maintained fairly well. There was a wire fence around about half an acre of land. The realtors' name on the sign was Hawley and Calkins in San Fernando.

"Oh, sure," said the salesman in that office. "It's an old lady owns it. Got too old to live alone. I don't suppose we'll sell it very easy, all the commercial growth is west and it's not out far enough for a weekend cabin. Sure I can tell you. Her name is Deeming. Harriet Deeming. It's an address in Van Nuys."

It was an attractive beige stucco house on a good residential street, and the woman who opened the door looked in surprise at the badge. "Well, I can't imagine what the police want with Mother Deeming, but she's always pleased to talk to anyone. Come in." She took him into a pleasant living room and introduced him to a little old woman in a clean cotton housedress sitting in a rocking chair knitting, a cane propped at her side. She had white hair and bright brown eyes, sharp and intelligent on him. Mendoza sat down and asked, "When you lived in that house up on Indian Canyon Road, did you ever know Elias Dobbs?"

"Now you do bring back some old times to me," she said interestedly. "Indeed we did."

"What can you tell me about him and do you know where he lives now?"

"Not exactly, no. My, how I did hate that man one time. But I've got past that now. I could tell you this and that about him." She didn't ask why he wanted to know. "He was a hard man, a regular miser. Frank and I bought that old place, well, paying on it, you know, in nineteen-thirty, we were both raised in the country and thought we could grow a lot of our own food there. Times were awful bad then and we had it pretty tough, Frank out of work and the baby coming. Dobbs lived up the road, and I always felt sorry for his family. There were three kids by the end of the war-a girl and two boys. We didn't know him so well then when we moved there, and when he offered to lend us that money, well, we didn't like to borrow but we had to-and goodness, he was around to collect the interest right on the dot till we managed to pay it back. How that man loved money-well, he got it. All he could use in the end, and I wonder what good it ever did him. One thing life's taught me, Mr. Mendoza, is that all you need is enough. You can't eat more than one meal at a time-and life goes so quick. Seems yesterday I was hoeing that garden and Tommy just a toddler, and here I am coming to the end and Tommy with grown-up kids of his own and their kids coming along, and he's got that good hardware business. We had it rough back there, but we made out. And when the war came along, Frank got that good job at the assembly plant and everything was better. But we went on living there because it was home then, and we got it paid off. I guess I was stubborn about it, I stayed there too long after Frank went, ten years back. Tommy and Faye at me to move in with them, but I like to be independent. It wasn't until I had that bad fall a few months back I saw it was only sensible. When we were first there, there wasn't a house around for quite a ways, real country. But then you know how the valley started to build up after the war-the freeway coming through and houses and businesses getting built all over. It's all just like one big city now-and that's where Dobbs got all his money, it seems he owned thousands of acres out there. He got left some and I guess he bought up a lot more when it was just wasteland at ten cents an acre or something. Right where the freeway came through and all around."

A great flood of enlightenment hit Mendoza. "What did he do with the money, do you know?"

"That was back in the early fifties," she said. "Thirty years ago. He started his own big real-estate company. He called it the Golden D. He went on living there awhile, that tumble-down old house. His wife was dead and the girl off somewhere, but about twenty years back he moved out. The boys, they were helping to run the business then. Goodness, they'll both be in the forties now, doesn't seem possible."

"There was a letter for him about six months ago-"

She looked at him over the top of her spectacles. "Oh, you know about that. Yes, it was funny. The mail carrier asked about the name, he'd never heard it-and I told him to send it to the business." So Juliette's letter, fatally, had got sent on.

"That's all very interesting," he said.

"People, they're mostly interesting," said Mrs. Deeming.

He found the nearest public phone and looked up the address, and swore. It wasn't a realty company, which would be open on Sunday. It was the Golden D Management Corporation, with an address out on Sunset in Beverly Hills.

ON MONDAY MORNING he landed there with Hackett at nine o'clock. The office occupied three floors in a new high-rise building. The top floor contained the managers' offices. It was all expensively and lavishly furnished. They talked to a svelte receptionist with lacquered blond hair and Mendoza asked for Mr. Elias Dobbs. "Oh, the old gentleman isn't in the office regularly, sir. Mr. David Dobbs won't be in until this afternoon, but Mr. Robert Dobbs should be in this morning."

"It's rather important that I see Mr. Elias Dobbs," said Mendoza. "Could you give me his address?"

She shrugged, incurious. "He's in one of our condos in Santa Monica-Carlyle Terrace."

In the car, Hackett said, "You took a shortcut, all right."

"Just following my nose. And here," said Mendoza in satisfaction, "is the money. In spades. And I have a small hunch we've been maligning Grandfather. I think I see a glimmer at the end of the tunnel, Art.".

The condominium was high up in another tall building on a quiet street, and the man who opened the door was about thirty-five, with a Scandinavian look to him, light hair and a round genial face. He said, "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. Mr. Dobbs is in the hospital, just since yesterday." He looked at the badge and gave them a curious stare.

"We'd like to ask you some questions," said Mendoza. "What's your name? Do you live here‘?"

"Brant. Bernard Brant." He lost a little of the punctilious manner. "Yes, I've been looking after the old gentleman for a couple of years, since he broke his hip. I've been a male nurse ten years, and I like the work fine, but this was the easiest job I ever had. He didn't really need nursing, just a little help. All there was to do was get his meals, drive him wherever he wanted, like that. He got back on his feet again after they put a pin in his hip, and he was sharp as a tack, mentally, you know. What's this all about?" He had stepped back to let them in. The living room was elegantly furnished with a big T.V. console in one corner.

"About his granddaughter," said Mendoza. "The girl from France. Did you know about her?"

"Oh, sure. Everybody did," said Brant. "Mr. Dobbs was excited about her coming. He liked getting letters from her. I really think it was the reason he just went downhill the last month, after he got the letter to say she couldn't come after all. It was a big disappointment to him. I think it sort of contributed to his having the stroke yesterday."

"Oh," said Hackett. "She wrote to say she wasn't coming?"

"Yes, and he took right against her when he got that letter. He'd been so interested in her, he had her picture beside his bed, he was always telling me how much she looked like her mother and she was just as smart, too. He was proud of her. He wanted to see her and show her off to people. And you know, I think that girl made a big. mistake not coming," said Brant reflectively. "Because he said to me more than a few times that Juliette would get a surprise when he died, he was going to make a new will and leave her a lot of money-make it up to her for how he'd treated her mother. One time when he was mad at his two sons he said, by God, he'd leave her the whole kit and caboodle."

"That's interesting," said Hackett.

"But when he got that letter, he turned right against her. She said that fellow she's engaged to wouldn't let her come, didn't want her leaving France-and she didn't send back the money Mr. Dobbs had sent her to get the plane ticket. He was mad about that." Mendoza laughed. "He said, like mother, like daughter, and he tore up her letters-he used to read them over-and her picture."

"I see," said Mendoza. "Did his sons come to visit him often?"

Brant grinned. "From what I heard they had to. He was sharp as a tack like I say and he was still active in the business. He'd kept all the reins in his own hands like they say. Those two, they had to bring all the papers for him to sign. He knew everything that was going on at the office. Why in hell are the police interested in all this?"

"You may be reading about it in the Times," said Mendoza.

At the curb beside the Ferrari he said reverently, "But it's beautiful, Arturo. So simple and so beautiful. The old man getting sentimental in his old age, besotted about the pretty granddaughter-and his mind still sharp. The business still in his own hands. So there'd be no hope of getting him declared incompetent. There are a hell of a lot of bribable people in the world, but not many of them will be reputable psychiatrists. David and Robert Dobbs stand to inherit everything, and that business must be grossing millions. God knows what they own all over the country. And I haven't any doubt that if the old man said it to Brant he'd said it to them, leave her everything, maybe. They wouldn't remember much about the older sister who went to France. And here's this upstart of a girl going to rob them of everything they had-everything they'd sweated for. He can't have been an easy man to deal with. They'll have had to kowtow to him-yes, Father, no, Father. And the strange girl stepping in to take the whole kitty because she reminded him of her mother and wrote the friendly letters."

He laughed sharply. "Just from the family feeling. Oh, by God, or course they had to do something about it. So there were two trips to Paris."

"How do you make that out?"

"The letter. The letter saying she couldn't come. Somebody had to fly over to mail the letter, for the Paris postmark. They'd have heard all about her letters. They knew about Goulart. They had that plan all ready a month before, by God. I wonder if they're both married. Some woman took out that library card. But that Social Security card-well, we'll have a look at them-see what shows."

"And just the unlucky chance tripping them up," said Hackett.

"Maybe not chance, Arturo," said Mendoza.

HE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL just to look at Grandfather, who was in a coma and by what the doctors said unlikely to come out of it. It was an old wrinkled lantern-jawed face on the pillow, with a mean narrow mouth. Not a pleasant character, Grandfather, but not such a villain as they had imagined.

He surveyed the Dobbses in his office enjoyably. David Dobbs was unmarried, but Robert's wife was a flashy blonde named Gaylene, in expensive clothes and wearing too much jewelry. Both the men resembled their father strongly, the same aquiline features and long jaw. ‘They were both impassive. The blonde looked sulky.

"It was a very pretty plan," Mendoza told them. “Of course your company had that derelict building on its books and a rudimentary look at it would have suggested Daggett as open to bribery. That was very competently accomplished. Which of you went to France?-first to mail the letter and a week or so later to murder Goulart and clear out Juliette's apartment? We'll have to look for a passport, of course. Somehow I think it was Mr. David Dobbs. I appreciate the touch about the money not being returned. That would have been the last straw, to set the old man against her. And Robert and his wife met Juliette at the airport-her pleasant new relatives-all smiles and welcome. You didn't take her home for the neighbors to see, of course. But you could have rented the nice little beach house for a week, or possibly the company owns a suitable place. And you gave her some plausible excuse why she couldn't see Grandfather right away-it only needed to satisfy her long enough for you to get her inside somewhere and get a drink down her-well-laced with a sedative. You kept her half-doped from Saturday to Tuesday, when David got back from France and told you it was all clear, Goulart was out of the way. So you called Daggett and that night you three took the girl to that apartment, left the artistic evidence scattered around, the rest of the money for the Daggetts and Garvey, and went home rejoicing. It all should have been quite safe, but Nemesis outguessed you." Mendoza laughed.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," said Robert Dobbs woodenly.

They asked the airlines and got confirmation of David Dobbs two flights to Paris. They heard from a garrulous friend of Gaylene Dobbs' that her name had been Hoffman before she married Robert, and she'd always hated her real first name, Ruth, used her middle name. So that was where the Social Security card had originated; but Mendoza had overlooked one small point about that. The original card, unlike the replica, would have have borne the date of issue; and that card had probably been issued to Ruth Hoffman when Juliette was hardly more than a baby. But when they got the search warrant for the Robert Dobbs' million-dollar house in Bel Air, they hit a jackpot. At the bottom of a carved wooden jewel case in the bedroom, among all the other expensive jewelry, they found Juliette Martin's engagement ring. The unique ring designed and made by M. Dupres in the Rue Lafayette twenty-six years ago.

And with the only display of emotion Mendoza was ever to see Robert Dobbs display, before that or during the trial, he rounded on his wife with a string of vicious obscenities.

"I told you to throw that damn thing down the john-"

"But, Bob," she said stupidly, "it's a valuable ring, it's worth a lot of money."

Mendoza got home late that night. It had suddenly turned much cooler and up on the hill above Burbank a strong breeze was blowing. It was nearly dark, but he could see the vague white forms of the Five Graces huddled in the pasture. At the house, the garage light was left on for him and he went in the back door, past Cedric slurping water from his bowl in the service porch.

"Well, you are late and all," said Mairi. "I kept your dinner warm in the oven-"

"Never mind, I had something downtown." He went down the hall to the living room. The twins and the baby would be in bed. Alison was reading in her armchair, surrounded by cats. "Well, querido, you finally remembered you have a home?"

Mendoza bent to kiss her. "Things should quiet down a little now that the heat wave's ending." Now they just had the latest homicide and two heists to work, and could hope that not too many new calls would go down. "You get on with your book, carina. I want to write a letter to Rambeau."

He went back to the kitchen for a drink first, and El Senor was waiting for him on the counter below the relevant cupboard.