The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack Page 8

  Murder is too common in any big city to create much stir ordinarily, but the bizarre circumstances of this one had caught the public’s imagination, so that it was the top local news story of the moment. The first item of the newscast concerned the Schroeder case.

  The newscaster said: A new development in the grotesque murder of Walter Schroeder was the arrest late yesterday afternoon of Samuel Clayton, thirty-seven, the first husband of the victim’s widow. Police have released no information as to what evidence led to the arrest, but circumstances of the murder were remarkably similar to those of an assault on the murdered man by the suspect two years ago. In that instance Clayton served eighteen months in prison for beating Schroeder unconscious. While in prison, his wife divorced him and married Schroeder. Clayton was released on parole only seventeen days ago, and this station has learned the Schroeders were separated at the time of the murder and Samuel Clayton and his former wife had reconciled. Schroeders dead body was found in Forest Park yesterday morning, both shot and beaten, and with a flower clasped in his hands. Coincidentally, when Clayton left him beaten unconscious two years ago, Schroeder was also found with a flower clasped in his hands.

  My conversation with Maggie the previous night popped into my mind. Switching off the radio, I started making phone calls. When I finished, I knew the wrong man was in jail for the murder.

  I was driving along Chouteau toward Spring when another brainstorm hit me. It wasn’t exactly a hunch, but merely a passing thought that the motive for the murder might have something to do with company business. Then it occurred to me that the quickest way to find out if there were anything wrong with the business would be from its auditors.

  I cut north to Lindell Boulevard, and fifteen minutes later I was talking to Thomas Austin, C.P.A., who had done the audit of Schroeder-Moore’s books.

  It was pushing nine-thirty when I finally got to the Schroeder-Moore Electronics Company. The redheaded Marybell greeted me cordially.

  “Your boss in?” I asked.

  “Yes. You can go right in, Sergeant.”

  “I would like you to come along,” I said. “This concerns both of you.”

  Her eyebrows went up, but she obediently rose and preceded me to the door of Jacob Moore’s private office. Opening it, she said. “Sergeant Harris is here, honey. He wants to talk to both of us.”

  Moore, behind his desk, gave me a welcoming smile. “Come in, Sergeant.”

  I went in and closed the door behind me. Marybell took a chair and looked at me expectantly. I remained standing, but moved over nearer the desk.

  I said, “Mr. Moore, I’m curious to hear how you knew the flower clasped in the hands of your dead partner was a dandelion.”

  His smile became a frown. “I heard it on the air.”

  I gave my head a slow shake. “It was reported simply as a flower in both newspapers and by every local radio and TV station, because that was the only information the coroner’s office released. I not only checked with the coroner’s office, but with both newspapers and every local radio and TV station. The latter even checked their tapes of all newscasts since the murder. No one could possibly have known the flower was a dandelion except the person who put it there.”

  He paled. “That’s ridiculous, Sergeant. Why would I kill my own partner?”

  “Because you had partnership insurance of a hundred thousand dollars on each other, and you figured that was just about enough to save this company from bankruptcy.”

  He licked his lips. “What makes you think the company is in financial difficulties?”

  “I just came from Austin-Hubbard. Your partner had milked Schroeder-Moore of most of its assets. He just couldn’t resist cheating everybody, could he?”

  He said nothing, merely waiting with a sick expression on his face.

  I said, “You should have tried to find out what he did with the money before you panicked and killed him for the insurance. Tom Austin made some discreet off-the-record inquiries and found out Schroeder was buying controlling interest in a rival electronics company somewhat smaller than this one. Austin figures his plan was to let this company go bankrupt, then have the other company buy it up for a song, and end up controlling both companies without the bother of sharing things with a partner. In Austin’s opinion, you could have recovered the assets he drained off if you had taken him to court, and even could’ve had him jailed for embezzlement if you had wanted to. It would have been simpler than killing him.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” he insisted with more desperation than hope of belief. “Your case is based on nothing but conjecture.”

  “Sure,” I admitted. “It’s also only conjecture that Marybell repeated to you the phone conversation between Schroeder and his wife that she listened in on, and that’s what gave you the idea. Your partner never told Marybell to phone Clayton. You told her to phone him and say the message was from Schroeder. That was to make sure that at the very least he would have no alibi for the time of the murder; at best, he would be seen prowling around Schroeder’s apartment house by witnesses. I’ll make a further conjecture. My guess is that all the time sucker Sam Clayton was ringing the doorbell, you had Walt Schroeder under your gun inside the apartment. When Clayton finally gave up and went away, you forced Schroeder to drive you to Forest Park where you did the job. Have I got it about right?”

  “You haven’t got any thing right,” he croaked. “I never killed him.”

  Looking at the redhead, I said, “If your only part in this was phoning that message to Sam Clayton, you probably could get off the hook as an accessory by telling the truth about who told you to make the call.”

  She had become quite pale also. She looked at Moore.

  “He’s cooked anyway,” I said. “As soon as I book him, I plan to get a search warrant for his home. This was such a good frame that I imagine he felt secure enough not to bother disposing of possible evidence. We’ll probably find the shoe bearing the heel-print that matches the bloody one on Schroeder’s forehead. And the murder gun.”

  Jacob Moore’s gaze inadvertently flicked sidewise at his top right-hand desk drawer. I was around the desk and had jerked the drawer open before he could shift his eyes forward again.

  As I lifted out the .38 revolver, he squeaked, “You can’t take that without a search warrant!”

  “Check with your lawyer,” I advised. “I had probable cause to believe you were getting ready to reach for a weapon.”

  I looked back at the redhead.

  “I don’t want to get into any trouble,” she said huskily. “If Jake did it, I had no knowledge of it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Who told you to make that phone call to Sam Clayton?”

  Her gaze flicked to Jake Moore, then away again. Almost inaudibly she said, “It was Jake.”

  I took out the little card I carry outlining arrested persons’ constitutional rights and began reading them to Jacob Moore.

  STOLEN GOODS

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1979.

  It wasn’t much of a twenty-fifth-birthday celebration. I was dead broke except for the rent money stashed in my room. Stan had a few bucks, but he had promised to take his mother out to dinner. All he was willing to blow for was a six-pack.

  It was a warm Saturday afternoon, and we were just drifting around in Stan’s station wagon, sipping beer. Stan had just turned off Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood onto a street called Archwood when he suddenly pulled over to the curb and set his beer can on the floor between his feet.

  I was slumped down with my knees against the dashboard. Figuring he had spotted a cop, I quickly set my beer on the floor too and sat up.

  But it wasn’t a cop that had caught his attention. It was a duplex house a little way down the block. A sign on the lawn in front of the farthest unit said FOR RENT and gave a realtor’s address
and telephone number. A U-Haul truck was backed into the driveway, and a man and a woman were just mounting the porch steps.

  He was a burly, thick-shouldered man of about forty, wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt that exposed powerful forearms matted with black hair. She was a well built but rather substantial blonde of perhaps thirty-five in slacks and low-heeled shoes. Presumably they were the Stokeleys—a decorative redwood sign with that name printed on it hung just below the porch roof in front of the door. As we watched she preceded him through the open front door.

  Then I saw what had attracted Stan’s attention. A console television set stood on the grass at the bottom of the porch steps. Apparently the couple had carried it from the house and set it down instead of loading it onto the truck, then reentered the house for some reason.

  “What do you think, Jerry? Stan asked.

  I looked at him. “About what?”

  “Think we could rip it off before they come out again?”

  “Are you nuts?” I inquired. “Suppose they caught our license number?”

  “It’s too late anyway,” he said ruefully. “Here they come.”

  The man was backing through the front door, carrying one end of a sofa. The woman had the other end. They carried it down the steps and slid it onto the truck, then lifted the television set on after it. Apparently they had decided after they got the TV set outside that the sofa should go on first.

  As the man raised and latched the truck tailgate, the woman went back up the steps to close and lock the front door. Through the barren windows we could see there was still some furniture inside.

  I said, “They must not be moving a distance. It looks like they plan to make more than one trip.

  We watched as the woman came back down the steps and both she and the man climbed into the truck cab, the man behind the wheel. After the truck had driven off, Stan examined the nearer unit of the duplex thoughtfully. The front drapes were open and no one could be seen inside.

  “It looks like their neighbors are out,” he commented.

  “So?”

  Instead of answering he climbed out, walked up the sidewalk to the duplex, and rang the upstairs bell. After waiting a few moments he returned to the car.

  “Nobody home, he said. “Do you think there’s an alley behind the place?”

  “Why don’t you drive around and see?’ I suggested.

  There was an alley, and the backyard of the duplex was surrounded by a six-foot-high redwood fence that the neighbors couldn’t see over.

  Stan parked so that the rear of the station wagon was just beyond the gate. He opened the rear end before we went through the gate. I went up the back-porch steps first. I examined the neighbor’s back door, and made a face when I saw it had one of those fancy deadbolt locks that don’t work by spring action but have to be locked with a key.

  The other one was a simple spring lock. It was unlikely anyone was inside or the woman wouldn’t have locked the front door but just to be safe I pounded on the door.

  When no one answered I tried the knob. The door was locked but spring locks are no problem. It took me about fifteen seconds to push the bolt open by shoving a plastic credit card into the slit between the door and the jamb.

  The door led into the kitchen. A quick glance around told us there was nothing of interest there. Off the kitchen was a dining room devoid of furniture. A pair of bedrooms off a central hallway were empty too. The only room still containing furniture was the front room, and it contained only three items—an overstuffed chair, a spinet, and a combination AM-FM radio, tape-and-record player.

  The latter was a beaut. Hi-fi is my hobby, and I’ve checked out every stereo combo on the market. This one, I knew, retailed for about $1,500 without the speakers.

  Glancing around, I noted spots in the opposite corners of the room at ceiling level where the wall paint was lighter than that surrounding it. Pointing out the spots, I said ruefully, “The speakers were there. They’ve already moved them.

  “You can buy speakers anywhere,” Stan said. “Is it a good set?”

  “About fifteen hundred clams, as is.”

  Stan emitted a small whistle. “That means Spooky would lay out a hundred and fifty.”

  I had been thinking in terms of replacing the hi-fi set in my room, but that was only an idle dream. I needed the seventy-five bucks that would be my share a lot more than I needed a better hi-fi. I knew we would have to fence it. Sighing. I stooped to grab one end and told Stan to get the other end.

  It was heavier than I d expected. We re both pretty sizeable guys. At six-feet-four but only 150 pounds, I was pretty strung out, but I was strong as an ox. And Stan, who was thirty-live pounds heavier than me, didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. We had to set the cabinet down to rest twice en route to the back gate though. It must have weighed two hundred pounds.

  We finally got it loaded into the back of the station wagon. Stan closed up the rear end as I was shutting the gate. He slid under the wheel and I climbed in the other side.

  As we drove off, I lifted my beer can from the floor and took a slug from it. Stan lifted his too and drained it.

  I said, “How about that spinet?

  Stan just looked at me without answering. It was a dumb question. The spinet would never have fit into the station wagon, even if we’d left the hi-fi behind.

  We drove straight to the Jerry Hitter Service Station off San Fernando Road. The station bore my name because I owned it, and that’s why I was broke. I not only couldn’t make a living from it, I couldn’t sell it. It had been closed and up for sale for six months. In the meantime I had squeezed a few dollars out of it by selling off as much of the equipment and as many of the tools as I could. I had also sold my car, and that income, supplemented by whatever Stan and I managed to rip off, was all that kept me going.

  Stan and I used the closed station for temporary storage of our stolen goods. We never left anything there very long, though, because in that neighborhood there was too much danger of it being re-stolen. Despite the boards over the front windows and the protective wire mesh over the smaller ones, there had been several attempted break-ins-none so far successful, probably because they’d been by kids instead of pros.

  Stan backed the station wagon up to the service-garage door. We got out and I went to get the key from where it hung on a hook up inside the mouth of the drainpipe, then he opened the hack of the station wagon while I unlocked and raised the sliding metal door.

  We carried the set over to the wall where the single live electrical outlet was. The utilities had been shut off since I closed the place, but I’d tapped one of the circuits of the office building next door to run a line to that outlet so we could test the appliances we ripped off.

  When we had set it down, I said. “Let’s run over and pick up my speakers so we can see how it plays.”

  Glancing at his wristwatch, Stan said, “I can run you over and back but I won’t be able to stick around. I told Mom to be ready by five.”

  At twenty-four, Stan still lived with and sponged off his widowed mother, but in a lot of ways he was good to her—like never keeping her waiting, for instance.

  “O.K., I can handle it alone, I told him.

  My rooming house was on Cypress Avenue, only about four blocks from the service station. My room was on the second floor. I stuck an eight-track tape in my hip pocket and picked out an LP record. I unplugged my speakers and each of us started downstairs with one.

  My landlady’s behemoth figure was blocking the foot of the stairs. Her hands were on her hips—a storm signal.

  Coming to a halt, I said politely, “Yes, Mrs. Sull?

  “Moving, Mr. Hitter?” she inquired.

  “No.”

  She examined both speakers. “Perhaps you’re planning to pawn those to pay your rent—which is due on Monday, in case you’ve forgotten.


  I shook my head. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll have it for you.”

  “Well, now, that will be a pleasant change, she said. “This time you won’t be requesting a few days grace?

  Since she had made it clear at the end of the previous month that grace would no longer be extended—and my room lock would be changed on the second of the month if my rent wasn’t paid on the first—I took that as a rhetorical question. “You’ll be paid on time,” I assured her. “May we get by, please?”

  She moved aside like the opening of a massive door. As we went by she said ominously, “Good afternoon, Mr. Turner.”

  Stan, who has always been terrified of the woman, muttered something inaudible.

  As we loaded the speakers into the station wagon he asked me, “How old is Mrs. Sull?’

  “I don’t know. Not as old as she looks. Forty-five, maybe.”

  “That’s not too old, he said. “I know how you could get her off your back about the rent permanently.”

  “How?”

  “Marry her.”

  When I stopped laughing. I climbed into the car.

  * * * *

  We got back to the station and Stan helped me unload the speakers. Then he looked at his watch again and said he had to go.

  “O.K.,” I told him. “You going to contact Spooky?”

  “After dinner. That won’t be too late, we should be home by seven. I’m just taking Mom to a Mexican-food joint.

  “Give me a ring when you get home, huh? I said.

  “Sure.”

  He went out and pulled the sliding door closed behind him. A moment later I heard him drive off.

  With the door closed the lighting in the service garage was kind of dim because the windows were dirty and the wire mesh over them further cut the light. But I could see well enough to operate. I attached the speakers, plugged in the set, and lifted off the lid. As it was set for AM radio, I left it there and switched it on.