Meet Me at the Morgue

chapter 5

There were pounding footsteps outside. Mrs. Johnson brushed past me and ran to open the back door. A man’s voice, breathless and thin, cried: “Has he come back, Helen? Is he here?”

“Not yet.” She assumed a cool professional tone. “You know you shouldn’t run, dear. Now come in and sit down and be quiet.”

“It’s hard to hold myself back. I should be out looking for him.”

“No, Abel. There’s a friend of yours here. Come in and talk to him.”

Johnson came through the back kitchen, his wife’s solicitous arm around his shoulders. I had a queer twinge of pity, or some other feeling, when I saw the two together: the handsome fire-haired woman supporting the aging man. He needed support. His white head, darkened with perspiration, drooped on his shoulders. Hatless and coatless and unshaved, he looked smaller and older than I remembered him.

As soon as he saw me and Ann, he straightened up and pushed his wife away with a weak impatient gesture. I suspected that he was drawing on his last reserves of energy. “Cross? What brings you here? That courthouse grapevine working overtime?”

“Mrs. Miner came to my office about an hour ago.” I explained why.

While I was talking, Larry Seifel came in behind him and paused in the doorway. Tall and young and broadshouldered in a double-breasted gabardine suit that accentuated his build, he made a curious contrast with his employer. Mrs. Johnson’s familiar glance at him seemed to take note of the contrast. Except that his eyes were a shade too sharp and bright in his tanned face, his square crew-cut a shade too consciously youthful, Larry Seifel was a very presentable young man.

A look of recognition passed between him and Ann Devon. Her blush was still burning like the glow from an inner fire. On the other side of the table, Mrs. Miner seemed to be trying to make herself small.

Before I had finished talking, Johnson turned on her. He shouted in a terrible, broken voice: “What are you trying to do? Get Jamie killed? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

Her brown eyes rolled in apprehension: “I thought if I could find Fred.”

“You thought! Nobody told you to think. I left strict orders that nobody was to go to the authorities.” He was breathing fast. His face was swollen tight with blood and anger.

His wife laid a hand on his shoulder. “Abel, please. She meant well. Please don’t excite yourself, darling.”

“How can I help it? Why did you let her go?”

“I didn’t know she’d left. Anyway, it’s done no harm. Mr. Cross isn’t the police. But he’s half convinced me that we ought to call them.”

“I agree, Abe,” Seifel said from the doorway. “There’s no sense in fooling around with a gang of kidnappers.”

“I absolutely forbid it.” Johnson took a few faltering steps and leaned on a corner of the table. “I’m not taking any chances with my boy’s life. Anybody who thinks he’s going to is going to have to do it over my dead body.”

His wife regarded him anxiously. His mention of death was uncomfortably close to the literal truth. He looked very ill. She said, in the tone of a nurse humoring a patient: “Don’t upset yourself, dear. We’ll do as you say. Nobody’s going to call them.”

Seifel came up beside me and spoke in my ear: “Ask him how long he intends to wait. This is serious.”

“Why don’t you?”

“He won’t take suggestions from me. When I try to argue, he blows his top. It’s a pretty mess, I’m telling you.”

I said: “How long do you want us to wait, Mr. Johnson?” His wife gave me an appealing glance, and I added: “I think you’re making a mistake, but I won’t act until I have your go-ahead.”

“You’re damned right you won’t.” He lifted his sagging head. “They said in the letter they’d have him back today. I’ve done my part in the bargain. If there’s any justice or any mercy, they’ll do their part. We’ll give them until midnight tonight.” He threw a fierce look at Mrs. Miner: “You hear that?”

“Yessir, I hear it. I promise I’ll stay right here. But what about Fred?”

“What about him?”

“He’s gone, too.”

“I know that, Mrs. Miner. If I thought that he was responsible for this, I–” Johnson choked on his emotion.

Mrs. Johnson took his arm and led him to the door. “Darling, you should lie down. You’ve had such a hard morning.”

“I won’t lie down. I couldn’t possibly rest.” But the heavy voice had faded into querulousness. He went along with her.

Seifel’s bright satiric glance followed them out. “Brother, what a situation. Abe’s carrying a coronary, you know. This stuff is murder. I practically had to lift him into the car at Sapphire Beach, when he got off the train.”

He took a fresh white handkerchief from his breast pocket, unfolded it, and wiped his forehead. He had a lot of forehead.

“Shouldn’t he be seen by a doctor?”

“Helen will know what’s best. She’s an ex-nurse. As a matter of fact, she nursed Abe through his coronary. Helen’s a very wonderful girl, in my opinion.”

I disliked his proprietary tone. The wire Helen Johnson walked was higher and thinner than most people’s, but she seemed to have somebody ready to catch her if she fell.

Mrs. Miner left the kitchen, carrying a silver coffee-service on a tray. Her red-rimmed eyes gazed straight ahead, fixed on some desolate scene in the distant regions of her mind.

Ann came around the table with the plate of sandwiches. She thrust it under Seifel’s nose. “Have a sandwich, Mr. Seifel. You look hungry.” Her furious blush had dwindled to oval patches on her cheekbones.

“Hi there, Annie. Thanks, I will.” He took a sandwich and lifted the top to examine its contents. “Salmon I like. What are you doing in cette galère? Hired yourself out as a cook? I hear there’s money in it.”

“Mrs. Miner made the sandwiches,” she answered primly. “I’m Mr. Cross’s assistant, or had you forgotten? I understand your memory is abominable.”

He patted her shoulder, simultaneously taking a bite of his sandwich. “At least the salmon is good,” he said in a sandwich-thickened voice. “What’s the beef, Annie?”

Ann lost her poise completely. She thrust his hand away like a hurt adolescent: “Don’t you call me Annie. I hate that name.”

“Miss Devon, then. Did I do anything?” He made a deprecatory face, but he seemed to be enjoying the situation.

“You know what you did. Your memory’s not that bad. It’s not as bad as your morals.”

“Hey, wait a minute.”

“I won’t. You lied to me last night. You said you had a client from out of town. You stood me up so you could entertain Mrs. Johnson.”

“Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Johnson. They’re clients, aren’t they? And they’re from out of town. This is outside the city limits, isn’t it?”

“Go on,” she said. “Talk like a lawyer. You won’t change the fact that you lied. I hate lawyers.” A single tear ran down her cheek and dropped from the point of her chin into the plate of sandwiches she was holding.

I reached across Seifel and took one. “If you two want to finish this off in private, I’ll go and sit in the car.”

Seifel turned on a smile. “Sorry, old man. Don’t mind us. Miss Devon and I are old sparring-partners.”

“There are better times and places.”

Ann left the room with a backward look at Seifel which was meant to be withering and was only pathetic. She seemed to have fallen hard, and nobody had caught her. My dislike of Seifel was turning acute.

“Women!” he said, with a humorous lift of his shoulders.

“Ann Devon’s my favorite young woman.”

“Mine, too. In my book she’s the complete darling. But even the best of them let their emotions get out of kilter now and then. They can never understand that business is business. They want to make everything into a personal issue.”

“A lot of things are.”

“Come on now,” he said heartily, “let’s have a little masculine solidarity here.”

I didn’t smile.

He changed his manner with an actorish facility and became the earnest young lawyer: “What do you propose to do, Mr. Cross?”

“Wait.”

“It’s a long time till midnight. Can we afford to wait? Can the boy afford it?”

“We have to. Johnson could easily die of chagrin if we don’t. In any case, it won’t affect the boy’s chances much. If they intended to kill him, he’s dead now.”

“You’re not serious?”

“I’m afraid I am. He’s a keen, observant boy. Jamie knows who snatched him, if he’s alive. He’d make a good witness, and they must be aware of that.”

His face registered horror, but Seifel was watching me coolly from some internal center of self-love: “I hope to heaven Fred Miner isn’t in it. I defended him, you know, on the manslaughter charge. Johnson asked me to do it.”

“I share the hope. I guess we all do. Incidentally, I’d like to get the complete dope on that charge. There’s no doubt he was guilty?”

“None at all. He never denied it.”

“And you’re absolutely sure it was an accident?”

He regarded me quizzically. “I’m never absolutely sure of anything. Beyond a reasonable doubt, is the test we lawyers use. I have no reasonable doubt about it.”

“Have they identified the victim yet?”

“Not so far as I know. I haven’t been in touch with Dressen lately.” Sam Dressen was the sheriff’s identification officer. “Anyway, he’s a bit of a weak-willie in his job, if you want my opinion. Washington sent back the prints he took from the corpse. Apparently they were too smeared and faint for classification. By the time they shot them back, the body was buried. Last time I talked to Dressen, he was trying to trace the man through the cleaner’s marks on the suit he was wearing. He promised to let me know if anything came of it.”

“But nothing has.”

“I guess not. For all we know, the fellow dropped from the sky. Which was fine for our case, of course. Fred wouldn’t have got off so easy if the man he killed had had friends and relatives bringing pressure.”

“It’s a strange thing nobody claimed the body,” I said. “Wasn’t there any identification on it at all? No wallet? No driver’s license?”

“Nothing like that. You’d think the guy deliberately wiped out his own identity.”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes, I took a look at him in the morgue.” Seifel’s gaze turned inward. “I’ve seen prettier sights. There wasn’t much left of his face. The fog-lamp smashed right into it as he fell. The pathologist said he died instantly. It was rather a shaking experience, I can tell you. I don’t do much work in that line, you know. Seems he was a young fellow, about my age.” His eyes sharpened again: “You don’t suppose there’s some connection between that accident and this?”

“Miner’s in both. The things a man does are always connected in some way.”

He raised his palm: “Let’s not get into philosophy. Afraid I have to shove off now, old man. I have a luncheon engagement and I’m half an hour late already. I’ll be in my office this afternoon.”

“I’ll probably drop by.”

“Do that.”

He started out, but I detained him. “Johnson left the fifty thousand at the station newsstand?”

“Of course. I was with him. That is, I stayed in my car.”

“How did he happen to have so much money on hand?”

“Abe keeps a large savings account. He still likes to take an occasional flyer in real estate. Now I really must run.”

He waved his hand and trotted out, the pads on his shoulders flopping like clumsy wings. I went through the butler’s pantry, which was stocked as a bar, into the dining-room. The white refectory table was set for breakfast. Ham and eggs and toast lay cold and untouched on the plates. It was as if the three breakfasters had been annihilated by a natural cataclysm as they sat down to eat.

Through the French windows that opened on the patio, a changing green light was thrown by the pool. I heard a murmur of voices and followed it outside. Ann and Mrs. Johnson were sitting in the green shade of an umbrella table at the end of the pool, conversing quietly over coffee cups.

Ann looked up and saw that I was alone. Her face showed mingled relief and disappointment. But it was Helen Johnson who said, in some surprise: “Is Larry gone?”

“He mentioned a luncheon engagement.”

She frowned into her cup. “I do wish he’d stayed.” She added with an almost embarrassing candor: “One needs a man around at a time like this. Abel’s pretty much of a broken reed. Not that I blame him. It’s not his fault, dear man.” She remembered her manners suddenly. “Sit down, Mr. Cross. Let me pour you some coffee.”

“Thank you.” I sat between them on a fishnet chair. “Is your husband all right?”

“I think so. I persuaded him to take a sedative and get some rest. Mrs. Miner is making up his bed. If he survived the first awful shock of that ransom letter – he’ll survive anything. Still, I hate to be left alone with him.”

“Won’t Mrs. Miner be within reach?”

“Oh, yes. She’s a good soul. Unfortunately, Amy Miner depresses me. She’s what my husband calls a bleeding heart, I’m afraid. I’m talking like one myself.” She drew a hand slowly across her eyes. “I’m talking much too much. It’s the reaction. I oughtn’t to have stayed alone here this morning. We thought there might be a phone call from them, you see. I waited for one, and the waiting just about drove me crazy. The morning lasted for years. I could actually feel my hair turning gray. It hasn’t, though, has it?” She ran white fingers through her hair. “Somebody shut me up, please.”

Ann said impulsively: “I’ll stay with you if you like.”

“I would like, very much.” Helen Johnson reached for her hand across the table. “It’s sweet of you to offer. You’re sure I’m not interfering with your plans?”

Ann looked at me with a Mona Lisa smile. “Howie, you don’t mind if I stay with Helen?”

It seemed to me that dealing with women was like playing blindfold chess against unidentified opponents. Ann had never hinted that she was in love with Larry Seifel, or even that she knew him. I had had a vain suspicion now and then that she was secretly rather fond of me. Now a shadowy triangle was taking shape between her and Seifel and Helen Johnson. I didn’t like it, but I said:

“Why should I? I have things to do. I won’t be needing you. You’re more use here.”

“What things, Mr. Cross?” Helen Johnson’s tone was sharp. Under other circumstances I would have resented it.

“For one thing, I’m going into Fred Miner’s background. How long have you known him, Mrs. Johnson?”

“Quite a long time, since 1945. He was in the Navy Hospital in San Diego. I was in charge of the orthopedic wards.”

“Before your marriage?”

“Naturally. I was a lieutenant in the nursing corps.”

“Fred was a friend of yours, then, as well as an employee.”

“I gave him his job, if that’s what you mean. Abel isn’t allowed to drive, and I dislike driving. Fred needed light work: he’s on partial disability. He was pleasant to have around. I suppose I was mainly responsible for keeping him on after that dreadful affair in February. I thought he should be given another chance.”

“Why?”

She glanced at me sharply. “Didn’t you?”

“I did. But I’m interested in your reason.”

“Why, I–” She stammered and paused. “I believe in tolerance, I suppose. I’ve had bad breaks in my own life, and people have been tolerant with me. I try to pass it on.”

“You’re a generous woman.”

“No, I don’t claim that. I do believe that people are entitled to at least one big mistake. Fred’s been a decent sort as long as I’ve known him. He drank too much one night and ran over a man – even if he knew he’d hit him, it’s understandable why he ran away. He’d had bad experiences in the war. Maybe he panicked. It could happen to anybody.”

“You’re still his advocate, then?”

“I wouldn’t say that. At the moment I’m quite confused. In a thing like this, it’s hard to keep hold of reality. When I let myself go I’m suspicious of everyone.”

The conversation was obviously becoming a strain on her. Ann shook her head and frowned slightly.

I finished my black coffee and stood up. “Is it all right with you if I make a few inquiries in town? We should see whether the money’s been picked up; there may have been a witness. I think you can trust my discretion.”

“Do as you think best, Mr. Cross.” Her gaze was dark and deep, lit by shifting green lights. “I have to trust someone, don’t I?”

Going back along the curved side of the pool, I kept away from the water’s edge. I had a strange fear of falling in, though I had never been afraid of water.