Эд Макбейн - The April Robin Murders

Bingo nodded. “Or if they did, they’d call up and order some. Or send the housekeeper or something.”

“Of course,” Handsome said, “he could’ve just wanted some fresh air. Only he didn’t take his car. And the drugstore was almost two miles away.”

“He maybe wanted a walk in addition to the fresh air,” Bingo said.

“Maybe,” Handsome said. “Only, he never did come back. And this Lois wife didn’t do anything about it.”

“Maybe she found she had cigarettes after all,” Bingo said, “or maybe she thought he’d gone to buy them at the factory.”

Handsome didn’t smile. “Then she said, she hadn’t worried and she hadn’t told the police, because he was a very moody guy, and sometimes he would go away for months at a time and not say anything to her or anybody else about it. Then she sort of changed her mind, and said that he had gone away on a business trip but it was all very secret and he hadn’t wanted anybody to know about it and told her not to tell anybody, and furthermore he hadn’t even told her where he was going and she hadn’t heard from him, but she wasn’t worried.”

Bingo stirred his coffee and said, “But that doesn’t mean he was murdered. Or that she murdered him.”

Handsome said, “When the police went all over the house, they didn’t find that he’d taken any clothes with him out of his closet. Or his razor.”

“He could have had other clothes,” Bingo said. “And two razors.” He preferred not to think of Julien Lattimer as being murdered, even if he had been moody, crotchety and hard to get along with.

“Well,” Handsome said, “there was the money.”

“How much?” Bingo asked.

“Fifty thousand dollars,” Handsome said. “I guess to people like the Lattimers it would be merely fifty thousand dollars.” He paused. “But not to most people.”

Only a few days after Julien Lattimer had gone out for cigarettes and never come back, Lois Lattimer had gone to the safety deposit box to which both the Lattimers had had access, and emptied it of securities which she had promptly converted into cash, fifty thousand dollars’ worth of it. During the following months she’d cleaned out the joint checking account.

“So,” Handsome said, scowling a little, “she must’ve figured that some questions might be asked sometime and she had to have some money to make a getaway, and that’s exactly what happened, and nobody’s even seen her since. She just got in her car and drove away, and the car turned up a coupla months later parked on a side street in El Centro but nobody in El Centro had seen anybody looking like her, and for a long time it would look like she’d turned up some place or been some place, all the way from Vancouver to some place in Guatemala, and even once in Hawaii, only it turned out either it wasn’t her or else she’d gone already.”

She’d done a nice job of getting away, Bingo thought.

“And after she’d disappeared, then the police really went to work to find poor Mr. Lattimer’s body, only they never did. There was one story about, maybe she’d put his body in her car and hid it some place way up in the hills where nobody would ever find it. Only then somebody else wrote another story about, she couldn’t’ve very well done that because while poor Mr. Lattimer hadn’t been a very big man, she was a little bitty woman and not very strong, so she couldn’t’ve put his body in her car, and then taken it out and buried it without she had help. Which she could’ve had, of course, if she really did have a boy friend.”

Or the housekeeper, now caretaker, might have helped, Bingo thought. She looked capable of that, or anything. And it could account for the nasty look she’d given them when they were looking through the house. Suddenly he resolved that they would get her out of the house that night if they had to carry her forcibly. He finished his coffee, paid the check and said, “Let’s go home.”

Murdered Lattimer or no murdered Lattimer, it was home to them now! What had happened to the Lattimers was a common-place story. Rich, middle-aged husband with a mean disposition, young and probably pretty and full-of-fun wife. She must have been pretty or he wouldn’t have married her; it had been Bingo’s experience that rich men married girls who either were pretty or were rich themselves. And in time she’d murdered him, done a good job of hiding his body and then gotten panicky and run away. A dull business, he told himself, and nothing that would ever need to bother Handsome and himself.

As they came up the driveway he could see a light showing in what he figured was the housekeeper’s room.

“I hope she’s packing,” he said grimly. “Because if she isn’t, she soon will be.”

He looked up at the forbiddingly big and darkened mansion, reminded himself that it had been built for April Robin, and immediately saw it as beautiful again. Poor Mr. Lattimer, no longer alive to enjoy living in a movie star’s mansion.

That was when the thought struck him. He caught his breath and said, “Handsome! Mr. Lattimer—”

“I know,” Handsome said. “I thought of it, too. Just now.”

“He can’t be dead,” Bingo said, “because he signed those papers this afternoon.”

Both were silent for a moment.

“It didn’t have to be this afternoon, Bingo,” Handsome said. “He could have signed those papers and left them with Mr. Courtney Budlong for when he sold the house.”

Bingo nodded slowly. The papers could have been prepared any time. He remembered that their names, the amount paid and the date had been written in Courtney Budlong’s hand.

“He maybe even could’ve decided he was going to sell the house, and fixed up those papers with Mr. Courtney Budlong before he was murdered,” Handsome said.

“And maybe she didn’t want him to, and that’s why he was murdered,” Bingo added. In that case would they still be properly legal papers? He hadn’t the least idea. But certainly Courtney Budlong would have known if they were or not, and if they were satisfactory to him, that made everything all right.

He walked slowly into the living room and over to the davenport, rehearsing what they would say to the caretaker. What was her name? He recalled Courtney Budlong mentioning it.

Handsome remembered. It was Pearl. Suddenly Handsome sniffed the air. “You smell anything, Bingo?”

Bingo sniffed, and nodded. “Smells like dry cleaning.” He scowled. “She’s supposed to be packing, not dry cleaning.”

He followed Handsome in the direction of the caretaker’s room. So far the only thing he’d thought of to say to her was “Scat!”

The odor grew stronger as they went through the back hall; by the time they reached the door, it was almost overwhelming. Bingo began to feel an unpleasant presentiment that something was terribly wrong.

Handsome didn’t stop to knock. He shoved the door open, fast.

The caretaker was sprawled on the floor, face down.

As he stared at her, the only thought that flashed through Bingo’s mind was that only that afternoon he’d promised Handsome that they were never going to be involved in any more murders in the future!

“She’s breathing a little tiny bit, but not much,” Handsome said. He’d already opened the room’s one window.

Bingo looked down at the floor. There was a wide, wet smear on the rug. In the middle of it a container of cleaning fluid lay on its side. He said dazedly, “Why would anybody be cleaning a rug at nine o’clock at night?” The sponge with which she’d been working lay beside her hand where she’d apparently dropped it.

“Maybe it was dirty,” Handsome said. “Maybe she wanted to leave the room nice and clean when she left.”