Bill Pronzini - Scattershot

The interrogation was still going on when one of the uniformed cops Banducci had dispatched to the carriage house came running in, bright-eyed with excitement. He had found a detached suction clamp, but that wasn’t all he’d found and brought back with him. He had thought to stir around in the cans of paint and turpentine left by the painters, he told us, and in one of the turpentine tins-

The missing diamond ring.

You could almost see Hickox come apart then, the way Joe Craig had in Xanadu. And when Banducci instructed the patrolman to have both the clamp and the turpentine tin dusted for fingerprints, Hickox broke down completely and admitted it. He had planned the robbery for days, even before making me his random selection as the fall guy-he had suggested to Mollenhauer a detective be hired in the first place-but he’d been having second thoughts about going through with it until Edna Hornback made her public charges against me; that had cemented his resolve. His statement as to why he’d decided to commit robbery amounted to two sentences: “I didn’t want to keep on being a rich man’s secretary. I wanted just a little of what Mollenhauer has for myself.”

They put him in handcuffs and took him away. I got to go away, too, with an apology and even an expression of thanks from Banducci. I wanted to leave quietly, without any more contact with Mollenhauer and his family; there was nothing I cared to say to any of them. But on the way out to my car, I ran into the lord of the manor himself.

No apology or expression of thanks from him, not that I had expected any. Just a frozen-faced look and a curt nod. I would have gone right on by him without speaking, but it occurred to me that while I was in his presence I might as well tell him that I wanted just a little of what he had, too-my fee for the job I had been hired to do. I said as much to him, politely, adding that I would send him a bill sometime next week.

He said, “Go ahead, but I have no intention of paying it.”

“What?”

“I owe you nothing. If you’d been on your toes, none of this would have happened. As it is, my daughter’s wedding has been ruined and the family subjected to an ugly public scandal.”

“You can’t blame me for that-”

“I can and I do,” Mollenhauer said. “Now get off my property before I have you forcibly removed.”

I got off his goddamn property. Telling myself as I did so: You’d better stay clear of the heavy-sugar crowd from now on. You can’t cope with them; they’ll find a way to stick it to you every time. You common, screwed-up, ethnic private eye, you.

Sunday again. A new day, a new week.

I slept until ten, drove down to the foot of Van Ness and watched the bocce players for a while, then came back home and called Kerry. No answer. I opened a beer, turned on the TV, something I seldom do, and tried to watch a movie. None of it made any sense, like my life these days, but at least it was a source of sound and movement in the empty flat.

Eberhardt called at one o’clock. “You crazy bastard,” he said, “you’re all over the papers again today.”

“I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t give a damn anymore what the media is saying about me.”

“What is it with you lately? Why can’t you stay-cm of trouble?”

“You think I plan these things? They just happen, that’s all.”

“Yeah. Much too often.”

“Look, I’m in no mood for another lecture, if that’s why you called.”

“It’s not why I called,” he said. “I’ve got some news for you. You’re off the hook on Carolyn Weeks, at least.”

“She’s been found?”

“Up in Eureka yesterday. Highway patrolman stopped a woman on one-oh-one for driving erratically, and she turned out to be Weeks. She’d just bought the car off a dealer up there, and she wasn’t used to the way it handled.”

“What was she doing in Eureka?”

“Heading north. Seattle. She knows somebody who lives there, and she was planning to hole up fora while.”

“Did she have the money?”

“In the car with her. A hundred and sixteen grand in a suitcase. She’d spent two thousand for the car.”

“How did she get out of San Francisco?”

“Took a Golden Gate Transit bus to Santa Rosa and then hopped a Greyhound for Eureka.”

“What about Hornback’s murder?” I asked. “Did she confess?”

“She did.”

“Why did she kill him?”

“Stupid reason, like most motives behind crimes of passion. Hornback wanted to go to South America, she wanted to stay here in the States. They had an argument about it on the way to her apartment, the argument turned nasty, she stopped her car in the park so they could thrash it out. Hornback ended up slapping her, and she grabbed a butcher knife out of a picnic basket in the backseat. They’d gone on a picnic on Sunday, that was why the basket and the knife were in the car. Screwy, the way things happen sometimes.”

“Yeah,” I said bitterly. “Screwy.”

“So she stuck the knife in him and then dumped the body. She was too scared and upset to do much of anything the next few days; just wandered around in a daze, she said. She was just making up her mind to get the money out of the safe deposit box-it was Hornback’s idea to stash it in there under her name, to cover himself-and split for Seattle when you showed up at the library.”

“Has Mrs. Hornback been told about all this?”

“Sure. Klein notified her.”

“And?”

“She’s happy as a clam. All she cares about is the money.”

“Did she say anything about me?”

“Not a word.”

“So now what happens? Officially, I mean?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m off today; so is the Chief. But I’ll tell you this: he’s not going to be happy about your involvement in that Ross fiasco yesterday. Or about the big media play this morning. They’re calling you Super-sleuth. One of the columnists even suggested the city hire you and fire all the rest of us. Who needs cops, he said, when we’ve got Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes all wrapped up in one package, rushing around solving crimes’ in a ripped tuxedo with his ass hanging out.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Was that in the papers, too? About the tuxedo pants being ripped?”

“It was. They played it for laughs.”

I could feel an angry flush coming up out of my collar; I wanted to hit something. Instead I said, “That ought to put me in solid with everybody.”

“I warned you, hotshot.”

“Sure. You warned me.”

“Listen.” he said, “I’d invite you over for a beer, but I don’t think you’d be very good company. Neither would I, for that matter. Just hang in there, okay? I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything from the Chief’s office.”

After he rang off I called Kerry again. Still no answer. The TV was still blaring away; I went out and shut it off and then opened another beer, but I didn’t want that either. About the only activity that appealed to me was a long drive, so I took my car all the way out to the Point Reyes lighthouse, through gray mist and rugged terrain that matched my mood. It was after nine o’clock when I got back, tired and crabby and dull-witted. I tried Kerry once more, but she still wasn’t in. Which left nothing to do except to crawl into bed.

End of Sunday. Beginning of the end.

* * *

On Monday morning I took what was left of the rented tuxedo back to its owner. He refused to refund my deposit; the trousers were ruined, he said; he couldn’t mend them; it was people like me who made things difficult for everyone. There was no arguing with that on any level; I didn’t even try.

When I got to my office there were all sorts of messages on my answering machine, mostly from media people. I didn’t return any of the calls. And I left the machine on so I wouldn’t have to deal with any of the other calls that came in. I also went out and locked the outer door; I didn’t want to be bothered by visitors, either.