The Case of the Crooked Candle

Chapter 15

Carol Burbank seated herself in Mason’s office, said, “I heard what Lieutenant Tragg told you as we were leaving the office. How long have I got?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “It depends upon whether your father has been arrested, and on what he’s said.”

She said, “I don’t think they can trap Father, only...”

“Only what?” Mason asked as her voice trailed off into silence.

She said, “He’s on a spot.”

“Tell me something I don’t know — start talking — try telling the truth for a change.”

“I’m afraid to.”

“Damn it,” Mason said, “I’m your lawyer. Whatever you say to me is confidential.”

“If I tell you you’ll quit representing us.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mason, snapped. “I can’t quit. We’ve dragged Della into it. I’ve got to see her through. Give me the whole business right from the beginning.”

Carol said, “Mr. Mason, this is going to sound terrible. Please don’t judge me until I’ve finished.”

Mason made an impatient gesture.

Carol said, “It goes back to something that happened years ago, something that has followed my father all through his life. Daphne Milfield knew about it and used that knowledge to make Father back her husband in this Skinner Hills project.”

“Blackmail?” Mason asked.

“Not that crude, but... Well, yes, if you want to call it that.”

“I think,” Mason told her, “I’m going to want to call it that.”

Carol said, “It was all done very nicely. Daphne Milfield rang Father up — just wanted to renew an old friendship. She would, of course, respect his secret. He could trust her discretion absolutely. A week or two later Fred Milfield called on Father. He had this Skinner Hills deal that he wanted financed. It meant so much to him and Daphne was so anxious to have it go through.”

“What happened?”

“Well, of course, on a deal of that kind, you can’t take any chances on having your plans get out before you have everything under control. Fred Milfield knew all about how to go about it, and he made his own arrangements with a man named Van Nuys whom I have never met. These two pretended they were interested in Karakul sheep and started buying up all the property. The field was even better than anyone had dared anticipate. Father pretended he was putting down a deep water well on one of the properties. They struck the oil bearing sand even before they were ready.”

“Then Milfield and Van Nuys are rich?”

“They would have become rich in time. That was the trouble. There is one thing Father simply won’t stand for and that is any double-crossing. He found out that Fred Milfield had been knocking down on him.”

“How?” Mason asked.

“The idea was to have all the papers made out for only a fair consideration,” Carol explained. “But there could be cash payments made on the side when the deals were difficult to close otherwise. Fred started lying about that. He’d make a payment of one thousand and then tell Dad it was five thousand. Since it was all handled off the record and in the form of cash, there was no way of checking on him.”

“How did your father find out?”

“He became suspicious. So Friday afternoon he went to call on Frank Palermo. He pretended to be another speculator. He picked Palermo because he knew that having signed one contract wouldn’t stop Palermo from signing another one.”

“What did be find out?”

“That Palermo had only been paid one thousand dollars.”

“How much did Milfield claim he’d paid Palermo?”

“Four thousand.”

“Then what?”

“Father was terribly angry. He tried to get in touch with Milfield, then left word for Milfield to telephone him at the yacht club. Father was angry about that accident, too. Milfield had been moving Karakul sheep in some trucks that were registered in Father’s name. There’d been an accident and the man that was in it had got the license number of the truck and Milfield hadn’t done anything about it. Father instructed his lawyers to make a settlement no matter what it cost. He was afraid that some shrewd lawyer would — well, do just what you did, investigate the license number, find out what was going on under cover, and start skyrocketing the price of some of the property on which deals hadn’t been closed.”

Mason said, “Let’s get back to Milfield and your father. What happened?”

“Milfield got Father on the phone late Friday morning. Father told him just what he’d discovered. You see, Father could have terminated Milfield’s connection with any future profit if he could prove fraud and embezzlement, and Milfield was in a panic.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he would bring Palermo down to the yacht and make him admit he was lying. Of course that didn’t fool Father any. Father knew Palermo could be bribed to say anything.”

“And Milfield went down to the yacht?” Mason asked.

“Yes. He didn’t get there until late afternoon, however.”

“What happened?”

“Milfield tried to bluster and threaten and took a punch at Father and Father knocked him down, climbed up the companionway, turned Milfield’s rowboat loose, got into the dinghy, started the outboard and took the dinghy ashore. He was intending to have Milfield arrested.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“He got in touch with me. I jumped in my car and beat it down to the yacht club. I persuaded Father not to call the police until we knew what sort of shape Milfield was in. The dinghy was tied at the float. I got aboard and dashed out to the yacht.”

“What did you find?”

“Milfield was lying on the floor — dead. He’d evidently hit his head against the threshold of the stateroom when he was knocked down.”

“Why didn’t you notify the police?”

“I couldn’t — because of that thing in Father’s past.”

“What was it?”

“He’d had a fight with a man several years ago in New Orleans. The man fell against an andiron and was killed. There were no witnesses. Father got out of it all right, but now if the police found out about his past record, they’d say that both cases had been deliberate murder; that Father had knocked the man unconscious and then deliberately cracked his head against the andiron, and had done the same thing in this case.”

Mason began pacing the floor.

Carol said, “You know the rest of it. I went back and told Father Milfield was dead. Father almost killed himself that night. Then I worked out this scheme of giving him an alibi. I knew that Lassing and a party were at the Surf and Sun Motel. He’d telephoned late Friday night and again Saturday morning trying to get in touch with Father. So I had Judson Beltin rush me up to the Surf and Sun Motel. We tried to catch Lassing before he’d checked out, but Lassing had gone.”

“So what did you do?”

“So Beltin paid the rent for another day on the apartment, pretending that he was one of Lassing’s party.”

“And then you planted the stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Where was your father?”

“He was keeping under cover at the restaurant where we found him.”

“How did the police know he was there?”

She said, “At an hour which had been very carefully arranged between us, Judson Beltin rang up the police and gave them an anonymous tip. I wanted the police to find him there and then for us to come in at just the right psychological moment and have Father pull the key out of his pocket — well, you know how it happened.”

Mason said, “You almost made it stick.”

“I know.”

“Did you,” Mason asked, “try to tamper with Lassing?”

“Yes. That’s where I made my big mistake. I rang Lassing up and told him as a favor to me to refuse to answer any questions about the people who were with him; to pretend that they were big-shots and if anybody asked if Father had been there to — well, he wasn’t to tell any lies, but was simply to refuse to answer questions in such a way that it would seem that Father and some business associates had been there and Lassing was simply not giving out the information.”

Mason said, “All right, let’s get back to what happened at the yacht. How soon after his trouble with Milfield did you get there?”

“It was an hour or so. I was at a cocktail party.”

“Where was your father?”

“He stayed at the office.”

“What time was it when you got to the yacht club?”

“I don’t know. It was still daylight, I remember that.”

“You jumped in the dinghy and started the outboard motor and went out to the yacht?”

“Yes.”

“And found Milfield’s body?”

“Yes.”

“Where was it lying?”

“Stretched out on the floor. The head was within just an inch or two of that brass-covered threshold.”

“The body wasn’t there when the police found it.”

“I know, the boat tilted when the tide went out and the body rolled over to the starboard side of the cabin.”

“How about that bloody footprint?”

“I didn’t know I’d stepped in the blood until I’d started up the stairs. Then the minute I put my right foot on the tread I felt that peculiar sticky feeling and looked down and saw what had happened.”

“What did you do?”

“I took my shoe off — both shoes, climbed up the companionway in my stocking feet.”

“Then what?”

“After I got in the dinghy I washed my shoes off. I thought I’d got rid of all the blood. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that I hadn’t. Some of it had dried between the upper part and the sole. I didn’t know how to get rid of them. So I simply decided to wrap them in a parcel, take them down to the parcel checking counter at the Union Terminal and leave them.”

“And the boat was on an even keel and the body of Fred Milfield hadn’t been moved when you got aboard?”

“That’s right. It was lying right there, the head almost touching the threshold.”

Mason said, “There has to be a way out of this mess. Not on your account. Not on your father’s account, but on Della’s account.”

He continued pacing the floor. Carol watched him silently.

Abruptly Mason whirled, picked up the phone. “They weren’t following Della Street,” he said. “That means they were following you. They’d followed every move you made. There must have been more than one detective. This claim check fell out of your purse. Someone picked it up and handed it to Della. Did you see him do it?”

“I remember seeing a man hand her something.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was around fifty and wore a gray suit. He had a very agreeable smile and...”

“Forget that agreeable smile. That was come-on. What color were his eyes, what color was his hair?”

Carol shook her head dubiously and said, “There was something funny about his nose. It seemed — it seemed rather broad.”

“Broken?”

“It could have been. Yes, that could have been it.”

“How tall?”

“Medium height.”

“Heavy?”

“Well, broad-shouldered.”

Mason dialed Paul Drake’s number on the telephone. “Paul,” he said, “I want all the dope on any police detectives who might be connected with homicide. I want to find out something about a man who may have been a prize fighter in his earlier days, about fifty, broken nose, broad-shouldered, medium height, light complexion, gray suit. Drop everything else and get the dope on him.”

“What’s so important about him?” Drake asked.

“He’s the one who handed Della Street the claim check after Carol dropped it. I’ve got to try to show that he was a police detective and that the police themselves pushed this claim check into Della’s hand. Make a police frame-up out of it. Get me?”

“I get you,” Drake said dubiously, “but that isn’t going to be easy. If you...”

Peremptory knuckles banged on the door of Mason’s private office.

Mason quietly dropped the receiver back into place, walked across the office and pulled the door open.

Lieutenant Tragg and two uniformed officers were standing in the hallway. Tragg’s smile was quietly confident.

“I told you I’d be back for her. Mason,” he said. “And this time it won’t do you any good to have a magistrate waiting. We’re ready to make a charge now.”

Mason turned to Carol Burbank. “Okay, sister,” he said grimly, “this is it.”

She said to Mason, “Please find Father and...”

“Don’t be silly,” Mason said. “The reason Tragg is ready to put a charge against you now is that he’s...”

“Got your father,” Tragg interrupted to finish.

“Exactly,” Mason said.