HCC 115 - Borderline Read online

  “We let him go around three. There’s your timetable, Ed. We let him out around three, he came back here, thought about things for a while, then wrote that note and killed himself. That checks with the rough estimate we’ve got of the time of death. You narrow it down—you did call him after I spoke to you, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. No answer.”

  “He must have been dead by that time; probably killed himself within an hour after he got here.”

  “How did he seem when you released him?”

  “Happy to be out, I thought at the time. But he didn’t show much emotion one way or the other. You know how it is with a person who’s getting ready to knock himself off. All the problems and emotions are kept bottled up inside.”

  I went over to a window and looked out at Horatio Street. It was the most obvious suicide in the world, but I couldn’t swallow it. Call it a hunch, a stubborn refusal to accept the fact that my client had managed to fool me. Whatever it was, I didn’t believe the suicide theory. It just didn’t sit right.

  “I don’t like it,” I said. “I don’t think he killed himself.”

  “You’re wrong, Ed.”

  “Am I?” I went to Donahue’s liquor cabinet and filled two glasses with cognac.

  “I know nothing ever looked more like suicide,” I admitted. “But the motives are still as messy as ever. Look at what we’ve got here. We have a man who hired me to protect him from his former mistress—and as soon as he did, he only managed to call attention to the fact that he was involved with her. He received threatening phone calls from her. She didn’t want him married. But her best friend swears that the Price girl didn’t give a damn about Donahue, that he was only another man in her collection.”

  “Look, Ed—”

  “Let me finish. We can suppose for a minute that he was lying for reasons of his own that don’t make much sense, that he had some crazy reason for calling me in on things before he knocked off the girl. Maybe he thought that would alibi him—”

  “That’s just what I was going to say,” Jerry interjected.

  “I thought of it. It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, but it’s possible, I guess. Still, where in hell is his motive? Not blackmail. She wasn’t the blackmailing type to begin with, as far as I can see. But there’s more to it than that. Lynn Farwell wouldn’t care who Mark slept with before they were married. Or after, for that matter. It wasn’t a love match. She wanted a respectable husband and he wanted a rich wife, and they both figured to get what they wanted. Love wasn’t part of it.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t respectable,” Jerry said. “Maybe Karen knew something he didn’t want known. There’s plenty of room here for a hidden motive, Ed.”

  “Maybe. Still I wish you’d keep the case open, Jerry.”

  “You know I won’t.”

  “You’ll write it off as suicide and close the file?”

  “I have to. All the evidence points that way. Murder and then suicide, with Donahue tagged for killing the Price girl and then killing himself.”

  “I guess it makes your bookkeeping easier.”

  “You know better than that, Ed.” He almost sounded hurt. “If I could see it any other way I’d keep on it. I can’t. As far as we’re concerned it’s a closed book.”

  I walked over to the window again. “I’m going to stay with it,” I said.

  “Without a client?”

  “Without a client.”

  * * *

  A maid answered the phone in the Farwell home. I asked to speak to Lynn.

  “Miss Farwell’s not home,” she said. “Who’s calling, please?”

  I gave her my name.

  “Oh, yes, Mr. London. Miss Farwell left a message for you to call her at—” I took down a number with a Regency exchange, thanked her and hung up.

  I was tired, unhappy and confused. I didn’t want the role of bearer of evil tidings. I wished now that I had let Jerry tell her himself. I was in my apartment, it was a hot day for the time of the year, and my air conditioner wasn’t working right. I dialed the number the maid had given me. A girl answered, not Lynn. I asked to speak to Miss Farwell.

  She came on the line almost immediately. “Ed?”

  “Yes. I—”

  “I wondered if you’d call. I hope I wasn’t horrid last night. I was very drunk.”

  “You were all right.”

  “Just all right?” I didn’t say anything. She giggled softly and whispered, “I had a good time, Ed. Thank you for a lovely evening.”

  “Lynn—”

  “Is something the matter?”

  I’ve never been good at breaking news. I took a deep breath and blurted out, “Mark is dead. I just came from his apartment. The police think he killed himself.”

  Silence.

  “Can I meet you somewhere, Lynn? I’d like to talk to you.”

  More silence. Then, when she did speak, her voice was flat as week-old beer. “Are you at your apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay there. I’ll be right over. I’ll take a cab.”

  The line went dead.

  9

  While I waited for Lynn I thought about Joe Conn. If one person murdered both Karen Price and Mark Donahue, Conn seemed the logical suspect. Karen was blackmailing him, I reasoned, holding him up for hush money that he had to pay if he wanted to keep wife and job. He found out Karen was going to be at the stag, jumping out of the cake, and he took a gun along and shot her.

  Then Mark got arrested and Conn felt safe. Just when he was most pleased with himself, the police released Mark. Conn started to worry. If the case dragged out he was in trouble. Even if they didn’t get to him, a lengthy investigation would turn up the fact that he had been sleeping with Karen. And he had to keep that fact hidden.

  So he went to Donahue’s apartment with another gun. He hit Mark over the head, propped him up in the chair, shot him through the mouth and replaced his own prints with Mark’s. Then he dashed off a quick suicide note and got out of there. The blow on the head wouldn’t show, if that was how he did it. Not after the bullet did things to Mark’s skull.

  But then why in hell did Conn throw a fit at the ad agency when I tried to ruffle him? It didn’t make sense. If he had killed Mark on Sunday afternoon, he would know that it would be only a matter of time until the body was found and the case closed. He wouldn’t blow up if I called him a murderer, not when he had already taken so much trouble to cover his tracks.

  Unless he was being subtle, anticipating my whole line of reasoning. And when you start taking a suspect’s possible subtlety into consideration, you find yourself on a treadmill marked confusion. All at once the possibilities become endless.

  I got off the treadmill, though. The doorbell rang and Lynn Farwell stepped into my apartment for the third time in two days. And it occurred to me, suddenly, just how different each of those three visits had been.

  This one was slightly weird. She walked slowly to the same leather chair in which she had curled up Saturday morning. She did not wax kittenish this time.

  “I don’t feel a thing,” she said.

  “Shock.”

  “No,” she admitted. “I don’t even feel shock, Ed. I just don’t feel a thing.

  “I wasn’t in love with him,” she said. “You knew that, of course.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “It wasn’t a well-kept secret, was it? I told you that much before I told you my name, almost. Of course I was on the make for you at the time. That may have had something to do with it.”

  She looked at her drink but didn’t touch it. Slowly, softly she said, “After the first death there is no other.”

  There was a minute of silence. Just as I was about to prompt her into speaking, she repeated, “After the first death there is no other.” She sighed. “When one death affects you completely, then the deaths that come after it don’t have their full effect. Do you follow me?”

  I nodded. “When did it happen?” I asked.


  “Four years ago. I was in college then.”

  “A boy?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at her drink, then drained it.

  “I was nineteen then. Pure and innocent. A popular girl who dated all the best boys and had a fine time. Then I met him. Ray Powell introduced us. You probably met Ray. He worked in the same office as Mark.”

  I nodded. That explained one contradiction—Ray’s referring to Lynn as the pure type, the one-man woman. When he had known her, the shoe fit. Since then she had outgrown it.

  “I started going out with John and all at once I was in love. I had never been in love before. I’ve never been in love since. It was something.” For a shadow of an instant a smile crossed her face, then disappeared. “I can’t honestly remember what it was like. Being in love, that is. I’m not the same person. That girl could love; I can’t.

  “He was going to pick me up and something went wrong with his car. The steering wheel or something like that. He was going around a turn and the wheels wouldn’t straighten out and—

  “I changed after that. At first I just hurt. All over. And then the callus formed, the emotional callus to keep me from going crazy, I suppose.” She picked up a cigarette and puffed on it nervously then stubbed it out. “You know what bothered me most? We never slept together. We were going to wait until we were married. See what a corny little girl I was?

  “But I changed, Ed. I thought that at least I could have given him that much before he died. And I thought about that, and maybe brooded about it, and something happened inside me.” She almost smiled. “I’m afraid I became a little bit of a tramp, Ed. Not just now and then, like last night. A tramp. I went to Ray Powell and lost my virginity, and then I made myself a one-woman welcoming committee for visiting Yale boys.”

  Her face filled up with memories. “I’m not that bad anymore. And I don’t honestly feel John’s death either, to be truthful. It happened a long time ago, and to a different girl.”

  “I don’t think Mark Donahue killed himself,” I said, “or the girl. I think he was framed and then murdered.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No,” she said, sadly, vacantly. “It should, I know. But it doesn’t, Ed.” She stood up. “Do you know why I really wanted to come here?”

  “To talk.”

  “Yes. I’ve learned to pretend, you see. And I intend to pretend, too. I’ll be the very shocked and saddened Miss Farwell now. That’s the role I have to play.” Another too-brief smile. “But I don’t have to play that role with you, Ed. I wanted to say what I felt if only to one person. Or what I didn’t feel.” She rose to leave.

  “And now I’ll wear imitation widow’s weeds for a while, and then I’ll find some other bright young man to marry. Goodbye, Ed London.”

  * * *

  I almost forgot about the date with Ceil. I’d made it the night before instead of the pass I would have preferred to make. When I got there, she said she was tired and hot and didn’t feel like dressing.

  “The Britannia is right down the block,” she said. “And I can go there like this.”

  She was wearing slacks and a man’s shirt. She didn’t look mannish, though. That would have been slightly impossible.

  We walked down the block to a hole in the wall with a sign that said, appropriately, FISH AND CHIPS. There were half a dozen small tables in a room decorated with travel posters of Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace and every major British tourist attraction with the possible exception of Diana Dors. We sat at a small table and ordered fish and chips and bottles of Guinness.

  I said, “Donahue’s dead.”

  “I know. I heard it on the radio.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Suicide. He confessed to the murder and shot himself. Isn’t that what happened?”

  “I don’t think so.” I signaled the waiter for two more bottles of Guinness.

  “It’s possible that someone—probably Conn—killed Donahue,” I added. “The door to his apartment was locked when the police got there, but it’s one of those spring locks. The inside bolt wasn’t turned. Conn could have gone there as soon as he learned Mark was released, then shot him and locked the door as he left.”

  “How could he know Mark was released?”

  “A phone call to Police Headquarters, or a call to Mark. That’s no problem.”

  “How about the time? Maybe Conn has an alibi.”

  “I’m going to check that tomorrow,” I said. “That’s why I would have liked to see Jerry Gunther keep the file open on the case. Then he could have questioned Conn. The guy threw punches at me once already. I don’t know if I can take him a second time.”

  She grinned. Then her face sobered. “Are you sure it was Conn? You said Abeles had the same motive.”

  “He’s also got an alibi.”

  “A good one?”

  “Damn good. I’m his alibi. I was with him in Scarsdale that afternoon, and I called Donahue’s apartment as soon as I got back to town, and by that time Donahue was dead. Phil Abeles would have needed a jet plane to pull it off. Besides, I can’t see him as the killer.”

  “And you can see Conn?”

  “That’s the trouble,” I said. “I can’t. Not really.”

  We drank up. I paid our check and we left. We walked a block to Washington Square and sat on a bench. I started to smoke my pipe when I heard a sharp intake of breath and turned to stare at Ceil.

  “Oh,” she said. “I just had a grisly idea.”

  “What?”

  “It’s silly. Like an Alfred Hitchcock television show. I thought maybe Karen really did make those phone calls to him, not because she was jealous but just to tease him, thinking what a gag it would be when she popped out of the cake at his bachelor dinner. And then the gag backfires and he shoots her because he’s scared she wants to kill him.” She laughed. “I’ve got a cute imagination,” she said. “But I’m not much of a help, am I?”

  I didn’t answer her. My mind was off on a limb somewhere. I closed my eyes and saw the waiters wheeling the cake out toward the center of the room. Stripper music playing on a phonograph. A girl bursting from the cake, nude and lovely. A wide smile on her face—

  “Ed, what’s the matter?”

  Most of the time problems are solved by simple trial and error, a lot of legwork that pays off finally. Other times all the legwork in the world falls flat, and it’s like a jigsaw puzzle where you suddenly catch the necessary piece and all the others leap into place. This was one of those times.

  “You’re a genius!” I told Ceil.

  “You don’t mean it happened that way? I—”

  “Oh, no. Of course not. Donahue didn’t kill Karen—” I stood.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Ceil asked.

  “Gotta run,” I said. “Can’t even walk you home. Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll have dinner, okay?”

  I didn’t hear her answer. I didn’t wait for it. I raced across the park and jumped into the nearest cab.

  I called Lynn Farwell from my apartment. She was back in her North Shore home, and life had returned to her voice. “I didn’t expect to hear from you,” she said. “I suppose you’re interested in my body, Ed. It wouldn’t be decent so soon after Mark’s death, you know. But you may be able to persuade me—”

  “Not your body,” I said. “Your memory. Can you talk now? Without being overheard?”

  She giggled lewdly. “If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have said what I did. Go ahead, Mr. Detective.”

  I asked questions. She gave me answers. They were the ones I wanted to hear.

  I strapped on a shoulder holster and jammed a gun into it.

  10

  The door to Powell’s apartment was locked. I rang the bell once. No one answered. I waited a few minutes, then took out my pen knife and went to work on the lock. Like the locks in all decent buildings in New York, this was one of the burglar-proof models. And,
like just 99 percent of them, it wasn’t burglar-proof. It took half a minute to open.

  I turned the knob. Then I eased the gun from my shoulder holster and shoved the door open. I didn’t need the gun just then. The room was empty.

  But the apartment wasn’t. I heard noises from another room, people-noises, sex-noises. A man’s voice and a girl’s voice. The man was saying he heard somebody in the living room. The girl was telling him he was crazy. He said he would check. Then there were footsteps, and he came through the doorway, and I pointed the gun at him.

  I said, “Stay right there, Powell.”

  He looked a little ridiculous. He was wearing a bathrobe, his feet were bare, and it was fairly obvious that he had been interrupted somewhere in the middle of his favorite pastime. I kept the gun on him and watched his eyes. He was good—damned good. The eyes showed fear, outrage, surprise. Nothing else. Not the look of a man in a trap.

  “If this is some kind of a joke—”

  “It’s no joke.”

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “The end of the line,” I said. “You made a hell of a try. You almost got away with it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re driving at, London. But—”

  “I think you do.”

  She picked that moment to wander into the room. She was a redhead with her hair messed. One of the buttons on her blouse was buttoned wrong. She walked into the room, wondering aloud what the interruption was about, and then she saw the gun and her mouth made a little O.

  She said, “Maybe I should of stood in the other room.”

  “Maybe you should go home,” I snapped.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes, that’s a very good idea.” She moved to her left and sort of backed around me, as if she wanted to keep as much distance as possible between her well-constructed body and the gun in my hand. “I think you’re right,” she said. “I think I should go home… And you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Good.”

  “I should tell you I have no memory at all,” she said. “I never came here, never met you, never saw your face, and I cannot possibly remember what you look like. It is terrible, my memory.”