The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack Read online

  When a few seconds passed with no sound I turned up the volume control and moved the tuning dial. Still nothing happened. I switched to FM and drew a blank. I had no more success when I switched to Phono and to Tape.

  Unplugging the set, I pulled it away from the wall and plugged in the work lamp I kept there. Since the lamp worked I knew the trouble wasn’t in the outlet.

  The tool rack on the wall still contained a few tools-mainly screwdrivers and pliers. With a Phillips screwdriver I took out the dozen screws holding the back in place and lifted it off.

  I meant to lean the back against the wall, but it slipped from my hands and fell flat on the floor when I saw what was in the cabinet.

  There were no works in it.

  Instead there was a dead body!

  The corpse was of a man about fifty, with a gaunt face and red hair peppered with grey. He was dressed in brown slacks and a blue sport shirt. He was rather skinny, and I guessed him to be about six feet tall, though his height was difficult to judge because of the way he was folded into his improvised coffin. The cabinet was only about four feet long by three high, and about the top eight inches was taken up by the turntable and the controls. The works of this particular model were set in a metal framework that could be removed for repair work simply by loosening four screws and unplugging two wires. Someone had done that, but the space left was only about four feet by a foot and a half by a little less than two and a half feet. The body was on its back with the knees crammed back against the chest and the feet jammed against the top so that the toes pointed straight forward.

  The cause of death was apparent. There was a small, purple-ringed hole in the center of the forehead that looked as though it had been made by a very small-caliber slug, perhaps a twenty-two.

  I screwed the back of the console on again and shoved the set against the wall. I left the speakers there-four blocks was too far to walk with one under each arm—but took my tape and record. I unplugged the work lamp, raised the sliding door enough to duck under it, locked up, and put the key back inside the drainpipe.

  It was five-thirty when I got back to my room, which I managed to do without encountering Mrs. Sull. After replacing the tape and the LP record, I went downstairs to call Stan from the pay phone in the lower hall. There was no answer. Obviously he and his mother had already left.

  Mrs. Sull called her rooms light-housekeeping apartments, which meant they were equipped with small refrigerators, hot plates, and a few dishes and pans. I had some canned soup and a cold meat sandwich, then tried phoning Stan again. Still no answer. It was still only about six.

  I couldn’t face the prospect of sitting alone in my room for a full hour waiting for Stan to call, so after some soul searching I took five dollars of the rent money hidden beneath the newspaper liner in my shirt drawer and walked to the nearest liquor store. I decided that if worse came to worst I could always take Stan’s advice and propose to Mrs. Sull—but there was no way I could survive the evening without a drink.

  There was a cheap brand of bourbon on sale for $3.99 a fifth.

  When I got back to the house I tried phoning Stan again before going upstairs but there was still no answer.

  Up in my room I had a couple of jolts from the bottle, just enough to settle my nerves. At seven I went downstairs to phone Stan. This time Mrs. Turner answered.

  When I asked for Stan, she said, “He’s out for the evening. Is this Jerry?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I think he’s headed for your place. We only got home about two minutes ago, and he went right out again.”

  “O.K.,” I said. “Thanks.

  It wasn’t more than a five-minute drive from Stan’s house to the rooming house, but it was forty-five minutes before he showed up. By then the bottle was half empty.

  “Where the devil have you been?” I asked as I slid in next to him in the station wagon.

  He gave me a curious look. “Are you bombed?”

  “I had a few jolts,” I confessed. “I needed them. Get going.”

  He shifted into drive. As he pulled away from the curb he said, “I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up.”

  Dipping into his jacket pocket, he brought out some folded bills and passed them to me—three twenties, a ten, and a five.

  “Your share of the hundred and a half,” he said.

  “Not from Spooky for the combo set?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Since when does he pay off before delivery?”

  “It’s delivered. I went by the junk yard and happened to find Spooky there, so he followed me to the station in his pickup.

  I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. Spooky Lindeman had been known to break arms for being dealt bummers. Charging him a hundred and fifty dollars for a corpse was likely to put him in a mood to break necks.

  “Oh, no!” I said. “We’ve got to get that set back!”

  Stan gave me a look of surprise faintly tinged with alarm. “Doesn’t it work?”

  “It doesn’t even have any guts.”

  Now he looked puzzled. “It didn’t feel empty.”

  “It isn’t. It has a corpse in it with a bullet through the head.”

  Stan drove right through a red light. Horns blared as cars coming from both directions took evasive action. He pulled over to the curb and stopped.

  “Say that again,” he requested.

  I repeated what I had said and described the body.

  Eventually he said, “You think that man and woman with the U-Haul killed him?” I nodded. “But why stuff him in a hi-fi cabinet? Why not in a trunk or something?

  “I’ve been working on that ever since I found him,” I said. “I figure it wasn’t a planned murder, but a spur-of-the-moment thing, and they’d already moved everything else they could put him in when it happened. They couldn’t just carry him out to the truck in broad daylight, so they had the bright idea of taking the works out of the hi-fi and hiding him in it until they could decide how to dispose of him.”

  Stan nodded. “But what did they do with the guts?”

  “Just loaded them onto the truck, I imagine.

  “Then the insides are probably over at their new house, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  Stan shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To get those guts so we can stick them back in the set.”

  I disagreed. “The first problem is to get rid of that body. Spooky will kill us if he finds it in there.

  “He’ll kill us if he finds the cabinet empty.” Stan said. “So there’s no point in taking the body out until we have the works to put in.”

  He was right, but there was another factor. I said, “How are we going to get the guts when we don’t know where those people moved to?”

  “We’re going to find out where.”

  He took the Hollywood Freeway to Lankershim Boulevard, drove north on Lankershim to Archwood, and parked in front of the duplex. By now it was a quarter after eight, but because of daylight saving time it was still light. Through the bare front windows of the unit with the FOR RENT sign in front of it, we could see that the front room was now empty.

  A car was parked in the driveway belonging to the other unit, and we could see a man sitting in the front room reading a newspaper.

  “You come with me for moral support,” Stan said, “but let me do the talking. Your tongue is too thick.”

  We both got out and I followed him along the walk to the front porch. The redwood sign reading THE STOKELEYS was gone, but a card that remained beneath the doorbell read DON AND EVE STOKELEY. Stan rang the doorbell.

  “What are you doing?” I said. “There’s nobody here!”

  “It’s for the benefit of the neighbors,” he explained. “Keep your
knickers on.”

  He peered inside through the front window, shrugged, and crossed over to the door of the other unit. I followed him.

  A plump, middle-aged woman answered Stan’s ring. Beyond her we could see the man reading the paper. He was about the same age as the woman and equally plump.

  Even if I hadn’t been a little bombed I would have let Stan do the talking—he’s a born con man. With his most charming smile he said, “Excuse me, ma’am. We’re looking for the Stokeleys, but it looks like they’ve moved.

  “Yes,” the woman said, “just today.”

  Stan let a rueful expression form on his face. “My mother sent me over with twenty bucks she owes Mrs. Stokeley. Did they move out of town?”

  “Oh, no, just over to Benedict Canyon Drive. They bought a home. Wait a minute and I’ll get you the address.”

  She went away, leaving the door open. The man folded his paper, got up, and came over to the door.

  “You fellows friends of the Stokeleys?” he asked.

  “She’s a friend of my mother,” Stan said. “I barely know her—they became friends after I got married and moved away from home. I only met her once, as a matter of fact. She’s a blonde, isn’t she? Kind of big but good-looking?”

  He nodded. “That’s Eve.”

  “And he’s a big heavy guy with hairy arms?”

  He shook his head. “That’s Bert Pinter, who works for Don. Don Stokeley is a painting contractor, you know. I guess he’s doing pretty good. They bought a beautiful house. I’m not surprised you took Bert for Eve’s husband-he was over there a lot. Matter of fact he was helping them move today. Don’s kind of tall and skinny, has red hair, turning grey.”

  The woman came back earning an address book and she read off an address on Benedict Canyon Drive.

  Stan repeated it and thanked her.

  Back in the car I said, “You’re pretty smooth.”

  “I’m proud of you too,” he said. “For keeping your mouth shut. Was it her husband they bumped off?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Probably the old triangle. Maybe they killed poor Don because he caught them in a hot embrace.”

  * * * *

  The house on Benedict Canyon Drive was a one-story green stucco home with a front stoop that was merely a six-inch-thick concrete slab, so the front door was only that much above ground level. Benedict Canyon Drive is hilly and curvy, and the house was situated on a curve at the bottom of a hill.

  There was no parking on the side of the street where the house was, so Stan drove past it, turned around in a driveway, and drove past it again to park on the other side. Because of the sharp curve, there was no parking immediately before the curve on that side either, so that he had to park on the crest of the hill a good fifty yards beyond the house.

  Because of the way the road curved we had a perfect view of the house from that point. When we swiveled in our seats to look back at it, it occurred to me that Mrs. Stokeley would be wise to build a brick wall along the front. If a car ever missed that curve it would plough right through her front door.

  The U-Haul truck was parked in the driveway running alongside the right side of the house. A Volkswagen was parked behind it. Beyond the house, at the far end of the driveway, was a garage with the door closed.

  It was just beginning to get dark, and the lights in the house were on. With no drapes or curtains on the windows we could see the big blonde woman—Mrs. Stokeley-and Bert Pinter walking around inside. We were too far away to make out what they were doing, but I got an impression of restlessness.

  Apparently Stan got the same impression because he said, “I imagine they’re kind of worried about what happened to that corpse.”

  “They must be going nuts.”

  “You think maybe they stored those works in the garage?”

  “If they didn’t, we’ve got a problem,” I said. “Because then we’ll have to try the house and I doubt if those two plan to do any sleeping tonight.

  Stan glanced up and down both sides of the street. Halfway down the hill on the other side two men were conversing on a lawn. A little farther down on our side a teenaged couple sat on some porch steps. That added up to a lot of witnesses. Stan said, “I guess we’d better wait until it’s good and dark before we check out that garage.”

  “Uh-huh. But we’d better not wait here.”

  Nodding agreement, Stan pulled away. “About eleven, you think?”

  I nodded. “We can come back then to check out the setup. If people are still up and around we’ll just drive on by and try again at midnight. We’ve got all night.”

  “All weekend, Stan said. “Spooky won’t be going down to the junkyard on Sunday.”

  “I’d as soon get it done tonight,” I told him. “I’m not going to be able to sleep until this is taken care of.”

  Where Benedict Canyon Drive runs into Woodman Avenue, Stan kept on it to the Ventura Freeway and took an eastbound ramp onto it.

  “What do you want to do until eleven?” he asked.

  “We could kill some time by picking up my speakers and taking them home.

  “O.K. Incidentally, Spooky said to offer you another fifty for those.”

  “Big deal,” I said. “They cost me a hundred and twenty-five.”

  By the time we got to the service station it was quite dark. Stan parked facing the sliding door and left his headlights on. We both got out and I got the key from the drainpipe and unlocked the door. We each picked up a speaker and stowed it in the station wagon.

  “We’d better pick up whatever tools we’ll need to put the guts back into that cabinet,” Stan said.

  I went over to the rack on the wall and got a Phillips screwdriver, a small standard screwdriver, and a pair of pliers.

  “Another thing,” Stan said. “There’s an eight-foot chain-link fence around the junkyard. Do you think you can pick the lock on the gate?

  “We’ll climb over it,” I said.

  He cocked an eyebrow at inc. “Carrying the guts to the set on the way in, and a corpse on the way out?

  While I was considering this, my gaze fell on the tow rope hanging from a hook in the corner.

  “Problem solved,” I announced.

  I took the tow rope and put it and the tools on the floor of the middle seat of the station wagon. When I turned around Stan was still standing in the service garage, staring at something on the floor.

  I went back to see what he was looking at. It was the wheeled creeper I used to use for sliding beneath cars.

  “That would come in handy to move the body,” he said.

  The creeper was longer than most, because I’d built it myself to accommodate my six-foot-four frame. It was about five feet long, and Id nailed an old roller skate to each corner, so it had a total of sixteen wheels instead of the usual four. “Let’s take it,” I said, and stooped to grab one end.

  It was a little after nine when we got the speakers back to my room. After plugging them in I put on an Aretha Franklin tape and turned the volume low.

  “You got any more of whatever it was you were drinking? Stan asked.

  “Sure, but I’m still a little bombed.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he told me. “Don’t be such a cheapskate.”

  I got out the bottle and made Stan a stiff highball, then decided to have a weak one myself.

  I kept mixing them strong for Stan and weak for myself and by ten o’clock I had fully recovered my rosy glow and Stan had caught up with me. Half an hour later he blearily studied his watch and said, “Let’s have a nightcap and split.” There was only about a half inch of whisky left in the bottle. That finished it.

  * * * *

  When we got back to Benedict Canyon Drive no one was outdoors and most of the houses were dark, but the green stucco was still ablaze with light.

  Stan park
ed in the same spot as before. In case we had to take off in a hurry he opened the back of the station wagon, and in case there was a padlock on the garage he lifted out a tire iron.

  At the bottom of the hill we saw Bert Pinter and Eve Stokeley talking in the living room of the green house. Her face was pale, her hair was sticking out in all directions as though she had been running her fingers through it, and she looked like a nervous wreck.

  We turned silently into the driveway, past the Volkswagen and the U-Haul to the garage.

  There was a padlock on the garage, but it was a cheap one. Stan gave it one muffled crack with the tire iron and it popped open.

  The garage door was the kind that swings up overhead and is held there by tension springs. The springs groaned loudly when we raised it. We stood still, listening and looking toward the house for several seconds, but no one appeared to investigate.

  The moon was bright enough so that we could see into the garage without needing a flashlight. It was a double garage, one side occupied by a Ford sedan. I assumed that was the Stokeleys’ car and that the Volkswagen in the driveway was Bert Pinter’s.

  Against the wall on the other side of the garage was a welcome sight-the metal framework containing the innards of the hi-fi combo.

  We each took one end and carried it out setting it down in the driveway. It wasn’t particularly heavy, probably no more than forty pounds. Remembering how surprised I had been at the weight of the set when we ripped it off, I wondered now why I hadn’t suspected something then.

  Stan tried to lower the garage door carefully, but the springs groaned just as loudly as before. Apparently this time Pinter was in the kitchen and heard it, because as we picked up the metal framework and started past the U-Haul truck—me in front with my hands behind me—a floodlight over the garage door suddenly bathed us in a bright glare. A moment later we heard the back door open and a deep masculine voice called, “Who’s out there?”

  We ducked out around behind the truck and heard the garage door springs groan again as the door was raised. Then there was a startled exclamation.

  “Let’s split!” I whispered.

  We took off with the framework at a loping run. We were across the street and a quarter of the way up the hill before the same voice roared from the entrance to the driveway, “Come back here, you thieves!”