Lawrence Block - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, No. 2. Whole No. 834, February 2011

I was interrupted by a call from Dave, so I didn’t get back to Zoë on this, but for some reason her words stuck in my mind, I suppose because of my last conversation with Dave. If Mick and Bonnie’s job was dealing in classic stolen cars then they were making a poor fist of it. And Bonnie didn’t seem to me the kind of woman to make a poor fist of anything.

Dave had rung to tell me that they’d arrested Mick Clyde and brought him in for formal questioning. “That’s the good news,” he said.

“And the bad?”

“Probably have to let him go again uncharged. We’re holding him for twenty-four hours, because his tenprints are all over the car.”

“Then you’ll have him on a theft charge at least.”

“Maybe. But they’re inside the car, not outside. Hard to see how he could avoid touching the outside if he’d driven the car to the castle.”

“Does he admit to painting it?”

“No. Says he’s a craftsman, he’d never ruin a Cord like that.”

I liked Mick’s attitude. “Is that all Mulligan has on him?”

“More or less. Incidentally, he lives in a semidetached with his mum and dad, with a single garage and forecourt. Not much room to run a stolen-car racket. Mulligan’s team has been all over that semi — not a sign of anything save that he’s a car enthusiast. No false number plates, nothing.”

“Maybe he rents somewhere. Anyway, these days you don’t need premises — only a computer for stolen cars. What about Bonnie’s place?”

Dave sounded pleased. “Glad you asked that. She lived in a terrace house, but each one has its own garage round the back reached by a communal side alley. And guess what we found in hers?”

“Red paint in three colours and a kiddie’s paintbrush.”

“Right, except that there were more than enough paintbrushes for two of them to work on it.”

“Without Mick touching it thereafter?”

“No through road there, Jack. The stolen-car charge isn’t going to stick. There just wasn’t enough stuff around in that garage for ongoing traffic — too much under the eye of neighbours. The occasional one, maybe, but not a whole string of them. I’m beginning to think there’s no connection between the cars that were later found abandoned and the cars that were pinched and have since vanished. Looks like more than one lot of villains at work. Mulligan will have to look elsewhere for his motives — and his evidence.”

Bonnie really did seem to be gazing at me reproachfully now. With those large pleading eyes on me, I felt as if I were letting her down. The reason for her death must surely have had some connection to the car thefts, for why else should she have been killed and left in the Cord? The answer had to be Mick Clyde, and the motive personal not professional.

Dave rang off and I turned my attention back to Zoë, Len, and the Triumph TR2 on which they were placidly working. Zoë’s orange spikes of hair were bobbing up and down with each movement. It was then that I remembered her “doesn’t sound much of a business to me.”

I didn’t like Mick Clyde. Come to that, I didn’t like Johnnie Darling, either. My brain had already clicked into gear over how they could have dumped the Cord at the show. There must indeed have been two arrivals, as I’d earlier fantasised. The Cord had been driven in, flaunting its registration badge and complete with poor Bonnie’s body hidden under a blanket. The driver then vanished on foot to pick up another car and make a second entrance. The other cars present when I arrived had been ruled out by the police, I had gathered, and so only Johnnie Darling was left in the frame, unless he and Mick were in cahoots. Someone had said that the driver had been tallish and thinnish. So was Mick, so was the major, but I’d already ruled him out, so that brought me back to Johnnie again, also tallish and thinnish. He was best placed to arouse no interest at the gates, simply because he was the one who was in charge of them.

The problem was that I couldn’t see just what deal he and Bonnie were running, with or without Mick Clyde, if the buying and selling of stolen classics was eliminated. And anyway, Bonnie seemed too classy a lady to fit into such a mundane business. She was born for the high life. I watched Zoë working away on the black Triumph — and then remembered what else she had said: “Black would have been safer.”

Of course it would.

“Blackmail,” I yelled out. “That was the business. No cars have been harmed in the course of this operation.”

Highly annoyed by my shout, Zoë accidentally smeared grease on the polished bonnet. “What blackmail?” she asked, after cursing me for startling her. “What blackmail?”

“Mick was the pimp. Bonnie seduced the owners, stole the cars, and then ransomed them back to the poor chumps on pain of telling their sexual secrets to their spouses or partners.”

Zoë looked interested, as though this could be a line for her to take up. No way, I thought. “How would she steal the cars if she was bouncing around in bed?”

“Pinched the keys?”

“And the owners didn’t notice when she said thank you very much for the sex, now I’ll pop down and drive myself home in your car — which, incidentally, I won’t be returning?”

She’d thrown me, but only for an instant. “That was Mick’s role — or Johnnie’s. Mick’s probably. She’d text him when the fun began, so that he could be sure the victim would be otherwise engaged. It would probably be in a hotel some way away, and maybe Mick tailed them there. Mick would nip over and pinch the car, then Bonnie would do her stuff in demanding cash in return for silence, her taxi fare home, and the safe return of the car.”

Zoë looked dubious. “Word would spread.”

“Come off it. How many victims are going to confess they were duped to their mates?”

“None,” she agreed.

“So all those who paid up received their cars back, after they’d been found abandoned unharmed—” I was back to base again. I saw the flaw in this argument.

So did Zoë. “But the Cord was.”

“And the owner saw red.” And then, as they say, I saw the vital clue.

Major Sir Peter Manning was duly arrested. Mulligan’s team found his fingerprints on the red paint — I hadn’t let him near the car, so there was no way he could have touched it before the crime scene was set up, and more conclusively, there was his DNA on, or rather in, the body. Bonnie must have given him one last treat before letting him see the travesty of his beloved Cord. He said later that when she’d called a week earlier to play the blackmail card his answer had first been on the lines of “publish and be damned” and then he’d offered her half of what she’d asked for. But the paint had been the last straw. She’d accepted the ransom offer, but then she had gone home and painted the car herself.

Bonnie had brought the Cord back on the afternoon before the show, collected her money, had a last sexual romp, and left. Unfortunately, recovering from the afterglow the major had followed her to ensure his car was safe. That did it.

His story was that he hadn’t meant to kill her, he’d just been overcome with fury at her “damned cheek,” as he put it. Faced with the consequences of his rage, he had registered the car for the show in a false name, left the car hidden in the grounds until the next morning, taken it out through the rear exit to the grounds, and driven it through the main gates as soon as he saw other cars arriving. He’d had to do that, because if he’d left it in place already inside the grounds, he would immediately have been in the frame.

I’d been wrong about the major earlier, and should have guessed the truth. Only a furious owner would register the car for the show under the name of Phil Stein. Only a philistine could treat a Cord that way.