Эд Макбейн - Snow White and Rose Red

Satisfied at last, she asked, “What is it you wish to know, then, Detective Bloom?”

“When was this account opened?” Bloom said.

Mrs. O’Hare consulted her records. Like a third-grader trying to shield a test paper from a potentially cheating neighbor across the aisle, she kept her hand cupped over the top of the sheet, hiding it from Bloom’s view. Bloom — Aunt Sarah notwithstanding — was beginning to dislike her intensely.

“The sixth day of July,” Mrs. O’Hare said.

“A Friday,” Bloom said, consulting his pocket calendar.

Mrs. O’Hare said nothing.

“What was the opening deposit?” Bloom asked.

Mrs. O’Hare consulted her papers again.

“Ten thousand dollars,” she said.

“And the current balance?”

“Seven hundred seventy-nine dollars and fourteen cents.”

“When was the last check drawn?” Bloom asked.

“I’m afraid I do not have that information here,” Mrs. O’Hare said.

“Where would this information be?” Bloom asked.

“In our Statements Department. All I have here are the details regarding—”

“Well, I’ll need a list of all transactions in the account from the day of the opening deposit to the last check written,” Bloom said.

“I’m afraid the bank cannot supply such information on one of its depositors,” Mrs. O’Hare said. “Not without her permission.”

“Mrs. O’Hare,” Bloom said slowly and carefully, “we are not about to get any permission from Miss Kilbourne because she is dead. She was murdered, Mrs. O’Hare. That’s why I’m here, Mrs. O’Hare. I’m trying to find out who killed her, Mrs. O’Hare.”

“Yes, well, you have your job,” Mrs. O’Hare said, “and I have mine.”

“And what we both have is this court order here,” Bloom said, “which I suggest you take another look at.”

“I have already read your court order,” Mrs. O’Hare said.

“Then you know it calls for complete disclosure. Those are the words there, Mrs. O’Hare, ‘complete disclosure,’ that is what the magistrate signed, a court order calling for complete disclosure. Now, Mrs. O’Hare, there is somebody out there someplace who shot a young girl and cut out her tongue—”

“Oh!” Mrs. O’Hare said.

“—and we’re wasting time here while he’s maybe planning to do the same thing to some other young girl. So, if you’ll pardon me, Mrs. O’Hare, I would like to quit waltzing around the mulberry bush, and I would like the information I came for. Now you go get what I want, and you go get it fast.”

“This is not Nazi Germany,” Mrs. O’Hare said.

“No, this is Calusa, Florida,” Bloom said.

Mrs. O’Hare went at once to get the complete file on Tracy Kilbourne.

When Bloom got back to the Public Safety Building, Rawles was on the telephone with the sixteenth real-estate agent he’d talked to since Bloom left for his court order. He hung up at last, and said, “No luck yet. Three more to go, but so far none of them ever heard of Tracy Kilbourne.”

“So where was she taking all her stuff?” Bloom asked.

“Good question. How’d you make out?”

“I got the court order, and also got what we need from the bank,” Bloom said, and put a thick manila envelope on the desk. “We got our work cut out for us. She opened the account last July, must’ve written three hundred checks between then and September.”

“What’s the date on the last one?” Rawles asked.

“September twenty-fifth.”

“How long did the ME say she’d been in the water?”

“Six to nine months.”

“That would put it—”

“If it was nine months ago, July. If it was six, October.”

“That’s pretty close, Morrie. September twenty-fifth.”

“Did you call Motor Vehicles?” Bloom asked.

“Yep. She had a Florida driver’s license, last known address 3610 South Webster. No automobile registered to her.”

“Well, let’s take a look at this bank shit,” Bloom said, and sighed heavily.

The court order had called for complete disclosure, and before Bloom left the bank that afternoon he insisted that they photocopy for him the microfilm of all the checks Tracy Kilbourne had written since the account was opened. The photocopied checks were the same thing as having Tracy’s canceled checks in front of them. And canceled checks could often be more helpful than either an appointment calendar or a diary.

The first thing they looked for was a check written to General Telephone of Calusa. They found none. Was it possible that Tracy lived in an apartment or a house without a telephone ? Everybody had a telephone! They began looking for monthly checks made out to a real-estate agent, a condominium association, a bank, or a private individual, hoping to discover where Tracy had either rented or bought an apartment or a house. There was nothing. How the hell could that be? Had the Cadillac dropped her and her luggage on a beach somewhere? Everybody got to be someplace , man, and Tracy Kilbourne seemed to have been noplace . Or at least noplace in Calusa. Bloom asked a detective named Pete Kenyon to start calling real-estate offices, banks, telephone companies — the same routine he and Rawles had just gone through locally — for any community within an arbitrary forty-mile radius of Calusa, and then he and Rawles went back to the checks.

The account had been opened on the sixth of July, the day after Tracy left the house on Heron Lagoon. The opening deposit had been $10,000. By the thirteenth of August, when the bank mailed its first statement to her, Tracy had written checks totaling $8,202.48, leaving a balance of $1,797.52 before another deposit was made — this time for $25,000, on August 6. Another statement was mailed on September 10. It showed that Tracy had written checks totaling $23,407.12, reducing the balance to $3,390.40 before another deposit of $15,000 was made on September 4. The last bank statement showing any activity in the account was mailed on October 15. It revealed that by that date, Tracy had reduced the balance to a mere $800.14. There were no further deposits after the one on September 4, which was the Tuesday following the Labor Day weekend holiday. In short, a total of $50,000 had been deposited in the account between July 6 and September 4 — and $49,199.86 of that had been spent by the twenty-fifth of September, when Tracy wrote her last check.

It seemed impossible that anyone living in Calusa — where mass transit was almost nonexistent — could have survived without an automobile. Motor Vehicles had reported that Tracy Kilbourne was a licensed driver in the state, but that they had no record of an automobile registered to her name. On the off chance that Motor Vehicles had been wrong, they searched through the checks to see if any large sum of money had been paid to an automobile dealer. They found nothing. Tracy’s biggest expenditures seemed to have been for clothing and jewelry, but in August she had written a check to American Express for $3,721.42. The memo line in the lower left-hand corner of the check was filled in with the words “L.A. trip” in the same handwriting as her signature in the lower right-hand corner. Had she gone out there looking for movie work? Wearing the new clothes she’d bought at Calusa’s fanciest boutiques? Sporting the jewelry she’d purchased in Calusa’s most expensive shops? They would have to call American Express for a detailed breakdown of her charges. In the meantime, they were extremely curious about those three deposits totaling $50,000. Nothing in the bank material indicated the nature of those deposits.

Bloom called the bank again, avoiding Mrs. O’Hare this time around. The manager he spoke to was a soft-spoken southern woman named Mary Jean Kenworthy. That was how she announced herself when she came onto the line.