Murder with a Past

5

Julian Smith’s office at police headquarters was as tidy as Smith himself. He nodded pleasantly to Tully and indicated a chair.

“Don’t bother to ask, Dave,” the lieutenant said. “The answer is we still haven’t found a trace of her.”

Tully sank into the chair. “When you phoned me to come right over, Julian, I was hoping—” Tully stopped without hope.

Smith filled two paper cups from a container of coffee and offered one to Tully.

“She hasn’t tried to contact you, Dave?”

He shook his head.

The lieutenant regarded him with sympathy. “Not much sleep last night, I take it.”

“Not much.”

“You look as if you could use some lunch.”

“I’m not hungry. Julian, why’d you call me?”

“We have a rundown on Crandall Cox.”

Tully set the paper down on the Homicide man’s desk; it was scalding his hand. He felt as if he weighed a thousand pounds. The headache still drummed between his temples.

“Have you linked Ruth to him?”

The detective said, “Not yet.”

“I told you,” Tully said. “It’s some nightmarish mistake.” Where was she? Running? Hiding?

Julian Smith glanced at him again, then picked up some papers from his desk. You’ll be interested to learn that Cox originally came from these parts.”

“Really?” It was just something to say.

“As a matter of fact, the name Cox rang a bell the minute I heard it. This fellow’s father, Crandall Cox Senior, owned a big hardware store where the Macklin department store now stands. He — the father, I mean — served a couple of terms on the City Council.”

“I don’t remember him.”

“It was a long time ago. Junior was the apple of his father’s eye — a rotten apple, as it turned out. Kicked out of school — he went to college here — wouldn’t go into the business, thought the world owed him a living; you know the type. When Cox Senior died and the store was sold, Junior ran through the estate in short order. Spent it mostly on women. Then his mother died. He had no other family here, so Cox liquidated what was left and lit out for bigger fields.

“Through his fingerprints, clothing labels, baggage and a few other leads we got a quick make on him from upstate and a few big cities in neighboring states. He was arrested and tried at least twice for extortion, once on a charge of blackmail, but no convictions.” Lieutenant Smith shrugged. “There’s probably a big book on him that’ll turn up when we’ve had more time to dig.”

“Sounds charming,” Tully said dully.

“Until comparatively recently Cox lived pretty well. Off women. Mainly middle-aged widows and well-heeled married women with busy husbands and too much time on their hands.”

Tully flushed at that, and Smith went on, looking through his window at the town’s main street. “About a year or so ago he began to go to pot physically — kidneys kicked up, an almost fatal pneumonia, a stomach ulcer, heart attack... He wound up in the charity ward of a city hospital, and we’re pretty sure he headed for here not long after he was discharged.

“Dave... I don’t think Cox came back to the old home town for sentimental reasons. He was sick and broke, and the way I figure it he had a pigeon here ready to pluck — some woman he could blackmail out of a lot of money. And she lost her head and killed him.”

“You mean Ruth,” Tully said.

“The shoe seems to fit, Dave.”

Tully swallowed the dregs of his coffee, crushed the paper cup and flung it at the window. Smith patiently picked it up, dropped it into his wastebasket and waited.

Tully’s skin was gray and his eyes looked as if they had been wiped with sandpaper.

“Thanks for nothing!” he said through his teeth.

“It may not be so bad, Dave. She’d certainly get the sympathy of a jury. Probably could even plead self-defense and get away with it. Why don’t you think it over?”

Tully laughed. “You think I’m hiding Ruth?”

“You’re head over heels gone on her, pal. It might have warped your better judgment.”

“This is one nightmare that seems to have no end.” Tully’s laugh was more like a bark. “What good would it do me to hide her, Julian?”

“You might be figuring on smuggling her out of the country — Mexico, South America, anywhere. Then turning your assets secretly into cash and slipping away to join her.”

“Julian, you can’t be serious—”

“Can’t I?” the detective said. “Item: We’re pretty good at looking for people. Ruth’s hiding in no back-street hotel in this town, believe me. Item: You cut short your visit upstate. Why, Dave?”

“I’d finished sooner than I’d expected. I’d only just got back to the house when you drove up and found me!”

“Or you left the capital two hours before you claimed. Figuring normal driving time, there’s still about two hours of your return trip we can’t account for, Dave. Maybe more, if you really pushed the Imperial.”

“You mean,” Tully snarled, “I’m a suspect in this case, too?”

“Under the circumstances,” Lieutenant Smith said unhappily, “I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you what you did with those two hours.”

Tully drew the back of his hand across his mouth, tasting a clammy slick. It had not occurred to him that he might be under investigation, too.

“For one thing, I got a shave and haircut,” he said.

“At the Capitol Hotel barber shop?”

“No, at a place near Monument Square. Not far from the restaurant where I had my breakfast.”

Smith reached for a scratch pad and a pencil. “Want to give me the name of the shop?”

“I don’t know the name of the shop. I don’t remember what the barber looked like, or the shine boy. I didn’t realize I’d need them for an alibi or I’d have taken notes, Julian.”

“You didn’t spend two hours in the shop,” the Homicide man said. His face was slightly flushed.

“Of course not! I decided that as long as I was in the capital, I’d take a quick look at the Markham development. The one with the artificial lakes.”

“Did you call Mr. Markham?”

“No. He’d have insisted on showing me everything in detail and I’d have lost half a day. I was only interested in his use of the terrain. I drove out there, cruised around, saw what I wanted to see, and then left.”

“You drove directly home from there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Tully, thanks.”

Tully drove away from police headquarters depressingly certain that Julian Smith was far from through with him.

It was easy enough to see it from the detective’s point of view: Tully returning early from upstate; Ruth, skulking in a darkened house, waiting for her husband, half out of her mind, hysterically confessing in his arms that she had shot a blackmailer; Tully, completely in love with his wife, hiding her without thought of the consequences...

Bleakly, he almost wished it were that simple.