Where There’s Smoke

Chapter Twenty-Four Third Fatality

Pedley phoned from a cigar-store booth on Two Hundred and Thirty-second Street.

“Mister Molloy? Good evening, Mister Molloy, have you had your nightly ptomaines yet?”

Barney said, “No, sir. I have not.”

“High time you corrected this state of affairs.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pedley hung up.

He drove down the West Side Express Highway without using his blinkers and he didn’t once run through a red. He crossed town at Canal, went south again, turned the ignition off around the corner from Park Row.

At the cashier’s desk in Ptomaine Pete’s he paused. “Top of the evening, Marshal.” The hollow-cheeked proprietor ducked his head in greeting.

“I’m not here, if anyone calls.”

“You’re not here.” Pete made it a statement.

“You haven’t seen me. I’m dead and I’m going to be buried in one of your back booths.”

Pete didn’t bat an eyelid. “I’ll liquidate anybody who says diff’rent.”

Pedley had finished his second cup of black coffee laced with bourbon before Barney limped down the long row of tables.

The fireman was pleased with himself, apparently, for he sang beneath his breath,

“Whose dish of cream have you been lapping up, Barnabus?”

“I’m derelict in my duty, boss.” Barney stood as straight as he could, considering his game leg, tugged at his bow tie, hiked his belt up over the paunch that was just beginning to make itself show. “I forget to bring you a highly important document.”

“Consider yourself bawled out.”

“The commish will be annoyed, I fear. ’Twas an order of temporary suspension, boss. Under Rule Twenty-Two of Department Regulations, such an order becomes effective when and as received. And there it is, a-laying on your desk. You ain’t received it.”

“Pity. Doesn’t appoint any acting marshal, does it?”

“Uh, uh. Under Civil Service, Chief of Department’s supposed to take over, isn’t he?”

“Yair. Hunneford would be nominally in charge tomorrow morning. Only he’s at that convention in Chicago.”

“You think maybe the commissioner thought of that?” Barney asked.

“He might have. He’s learned the First Lesson of City Hall: people don’t care so much what their public officials do, as what they say.” Pedley filled his cup with Pete’s special extra-strong coffee. “Ollie hadn’t heard a thing about the suspension.”

“She hadn’t?” Barney was plainly astonished. “But I thought—”

“So did I. Just goes to show. You and I aren’t the only ones who don’t trust females. Eat hearty. It’s on the firm.”

“I could eat the saddle off a cop’s motorcycle.” Barney ordered clam broth, chicken cacciatore, salad Ptomaine and mince pie. “There’s no word of that ex-paratrooper or whatever he is.”

“Marine. Lieutenant. He’s a starker, Conover is. Had to be, to prowl around behind Jap lines, couple of weeks at a time. Shaner hasn’t picked him up at the Lownes apartment?”

Barney shook his head. “Ed calls in, howsomever, with a request for you to ring him back.”

“I’ll get around to that in a minute. What about that list of cleaners?”

“I got everybody working on it, boss. No trouble to check Ross’s wardrobe. Or the Gaydel fella’s. Still working on Kelsey, Amery, Toleman, and Miss Lownes.”

“It might be the clincher. But if the boys haven’t brought in Kelsey’s suits, we’re likely to be S.O.L.”

“Why?”

“The ork leader is numbered among the missing. Hasn’t been heard from since he left his hotel this morning.”

“Guilty conscience?”

“I wouldn’t think so. But from what Staro said, it could be. That sweet thing, Toleman, put in his two cents’ worth — and it points to Kelsey, too. In any case, we’ll need that report from the cleaners to go into court. Anything new on the candy box?”

“Came from Schrafft’s.”

“That’s a great help. Hardly anybody buys candy at Schrafft’s except five or ten thousand people a day!”

“This was one of those holly-day gift packages.”

“Now you’re closing in! Practically nobody bought those!”

“Give us time, boss.”

“Hell, Barno! We can’t afford any more time. I’m not thinking about the suspension, either. That lightning-bug is going to strike again, you can bet your tail on that!”

“Oke-nawa. They’ve got that box under the lenses, now. By morning they may be able to tell you the name of the dentist who filled the cavity that ached when the guilty party chewed on the bonbons. Say, there was another call for you. From a girl name of Bernard.”

“Amery’s secretary. What’d she say?”

Barney pulled a Racing Form out of his pocket, studied hieroglyphics penciled in the top margin. “I thought maybe you’d wish me to be accurate in this matter, so I took it down in shorthand.”

“I’ll get around to calling you ‘Friday,’ presently.”

“She said, ‘Mister Amery wishes to inform Mister Pedley that the insurance policies on Mister Lownes will amount to two thousand five hundred dollars, that he died intestate as far as can be determined, that the estate will probate a little less than forty thousand after repayment of funds which are the property of Lownes Enterprises, Inc., that stock in that corporation is of no par value and was owned by Mister Lownes, five hundred shares, Miss Lownes, four hundred ninety shares, Terence Ross, ten shares. Mister Amery will be at home this evening if Mister Pedley wishes to call him.’ Boy, whatta mouthful. What’s intestate?”

“Means died without leaving any will. A stew-bum like Lownes would have done that.”

“Who gets the dough, then?”

“His sister, I expect. She’ll also get those shares in the corporation — which is herself. That might be an angle.”

“You don’t think she would’ve bumped off her own brother?”

Pedley took his time about answering. “I wouldn’t exclude it as a possibility. She had a lot to gain — and she may have thought that even if she was found out, a jury would refuse to convict her on account of the way Lownes had treated her.”

“But, boss! That would mean she’s the one who blew up the Wasson kid’s apartment, too.”

“We can’t write that off, either. But one thing sure, Barney. We’ll be two of the most unpopular people in town if we have to bring this home to an ‘idol of the air-waves.’”

“You can’t believe she did it!” Barney held knife and fork poised halfway to his mouth. “Two fires. Two murders. To say nothing of putting this Staro up to nearly giving you a case of permanent pneumatism. I couldn’t believe it.”

Pedley added more whisky to the coffee. “She had motive and opportunity to do the Brockhurst job; she had opportunity and a possible motive for touching off the Horatio Street one. And she seems to have most of the crew who work with her covering up for her.”

“Ah! If all this assorted arson was to keep what’s in the leather case out of the public purview, why’d she have set the fires before she had the gimmick? Why wouldn’t she wait? This way, the police might turn it in or some smart-jacks newsman might lay hands on it — spilling the beans to hell and gone.”

Pedley regarded him quizzically. “Every once in a while I get the cockeyed notion that the bureau would do better if you were in my number elevens and I was in yours. This is one of those moments, Mister Molloy. The query you’ve just propounded has been buzzing around in my head for several hours. I don’t know the answer. The book says a detective should never admit he doesn’t know which end is up. But I don’t know.”

Barney reddened. “I was just shooting off the cuff, boss. But there are still a few other prospects for the defendant’s chair, not so?”

“Sure. Several. Toleman. Kelsey. Conover. Which reminds me—” He put his napkin on the table, headed for the phone booth.

Shaner mumbled incoherently at his end of the telephone line.

“Peanuts, skipper.”

“What?”

“Mouthful — peanuts. I’ve had no sustenance all afternoon. Excuse, pliz.”

“Seen the lieutenant?”

“Nary glimpse.”

“What about the babe upstairs? She still sulking in her tent?”

“She’s there now. But—”

“Has she been out?”

“For about half an hour.”

“Where?”

“Lemme tell you about that, coach—”

“You let her get away from you, you bird-brained—”

“I got her back again. She comes home to roost after I momentarily and with good and sufficient reason, allowed her to escape my keen scrutiny.”

“Get to it.”

“About four-forty-five Miss L. comes out of the apartment building and starts over toward Sutton Place. With me right behind her. She isn’t wearing any hat or coat so I know she can’t be intending to go far in this kind of weather. She has a long envelope; she heads for the mailbox at the corner of Fifty-seventh and the Place. You know.”

“I know what a mailbox looks like.”

“Well, she moseys up to the box, looks around quicklike as if she wishes no one to catch her in the act. I’m half a block behind her and across the street — so naturally I duck into a doorway. Then I bethink myself of your trick about letters mailed by suspects and I figure I’d be smart to copy your procedure.”

“She was probably posting the check for the gas bill, that’s all.”

“It looked to me like an important missive. So, anyway, I wait till she comes back past the door where I am tying my shoelace. It seems plain she is intending to return straightway to the Riveredge. Which will give a minute to scribble a few words to the postman on a blotter which I happen to have in my pocket, asking him to make note of the address of the letter which he will find underneath the blotter and have the post office notify the Bureau of Fire Investigation.”

“While you’re doing all this, the little lady gives you the slip!”

“She crosses me up. That going out with no coat or hat; that was evidently done with malice aforethought. Because when I get back to the Riveredge, the elevator man says she’s not returned.”

“Remind me to assign you to a wheel-chair suspect, next time.”

“She’s only gone half an hour before she comes breezing back, skipper.”

“She could have bonfired the Grand Central in that time.”

“It won’t happen again, I guarantee positively.”

“Forgetsis. You’re not the only one in the bureau who hasn’t been able to keep track of a dame. Let me talk to your PBX chum — Hello, charming, put me through to Miss Lownes’s apartment, will you?… Miss Lownes… this is the Fire Marshal.”

“Oh, hello, Mister Pedley.” Her voice had no traces of alarm or concern in it.

“Going to be home around nine?”

“If you’re coming to see me, I’ll be home.” She sounded like a bobby-soxer accepting an invitation from her favorite boy friend.

“Around nine, then. ’By.”

He walked back to the table in deep thought, came out of it only when Barney jabbed the newspaper under his nose.

“The newsboy came in while you were in the booth, so I grabbed a copy. To see if they print anything about your suspension. But look!”

Pedley felt a cold prickle at the back of his neck as he read it: