Jeff Sherratt - Detour to Murder

“There was something else, I said. “Has nothing to do with this, though.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“Mrs. Hathaway had a big soapbox that she stored in a tool shed behind one of the bungalows. The box held papers and files dating back to the ’40s, insurance policies, phone numbers, that sort of thing. At first I thought the phone numbers might have some significant value, but when Roberts’s sentence was commuted I more or less dropped it.”

Brodie jumped out of his chair. “Make your phone call right now. Because when you’re finished, you and I are going to take a ride out to Los Feliz. I want to show you the crime scene and maybe you can verify a hunch.”

The lieutenant escorted me to a pay phone in the lobby and stood at a discrete distance, smoking a cigarette while I called the office.

“Mabel, I won’t be back this afternoon. Did anyone from Balford’s court call today?”

“No, no one called. But listen, we’ve got a serious problem here. You’ve got to take care of it right away.”

Christ, what now? “What’s the matter, Mabel?”

“Remember Rita’s client, the kid growing marijuana?”

“Of course.”

“Well, simply put, the five-hundred retainer check is no good.”

“What do you mean no good? Jesus.”

“I deposited the check in the bank, then mailed out a bunch of our bills, four-hundred and ninety seven dollars’ worth. And now all the checks I mailed, every frigging one of them, are going to bounce. I’m not going to jail for writing bad checks, no sir, not me. Goddamn it!”

“Calm down, Mabel. You’re not going to jail,” I said. “Let me figure this out. How could the retainer check come back so fast? It normally takes a few days for a check to be returned.”

“It didn’t bounce. The asshole put a ‘stop payment’ on it. He sent a message by courier, canceling our services.”

“Why?”

“He said he found out that you had some sort of trouble with a judge, your reputation is not stellar, blah, blah, blah. Then he said the five-hundred-dollar check had been stopped. Rita doesn’t even know yet. But I don’t give a damn about that. You’ve got to cover all those checks I wrote.”

“Look, Mabel, everything is going to be fine. Now do as I say. Call the bank and tell Mac what happened. Tell him I’ll be in tomorrow to straighten it all out somehow. None of our checks are going to bounce.”

“We’ll still need fresh money coming in.”

“I’m working on that, too.”

“How’s the new client, the one we got from Balford, working out?”

“He’s in good hands.”

“I hope she’ll give us a lot more cases.”

“I do too. Anything else going on?”

“No… Wait, there is something. It’s kind of funny.”

I could’ve used a laugh right then with all the crap that kept raining down on me.

“A telephone guy showed up this morning. Had thirty new phones. Wanted to hook them up. I said, “Do we look like a bookie joint?” I told him to take a hike. We didn’t order any goddamn phones. Big company like that botches their orders… I guess we’re not the only ones who goof up occasionally, huh?”

“Yeah, everybody screws up once in a while.”

Including Roberts, I said to myself.

“Wait, before you hang up, Sol called wants you to call him, said a guy named Bugliosi called-”

Lt. Brodie ground out his cigarette on the floor and started moving toward me. “Mabel, I gotta go. I’ll call Sol later.”

I felt a little relieved, certainly not about the retainer going bad. Those things happened. Fortunately, I had just enough left in the emergency reserve fund to cover the checks Mabel had sent out. So that wouldn’t be a problem. But more importantly, Balford hadn’t called and left a message saying I was toast. Balford was the firm’s primary source of income and it would be a disaster if she removed my name from the list again. The judge didn’t issue idle threats. She meant it when she said if she dropped me once more it would be permanent.

I hung up the phone and walked with Lt. Brodie to his car. I’d worry about Mabel’s checks, the bank, and Balford tomorrow. It would be too late by the time I returned from the motel to do anything about them today. I didn’t think Bugliosi’s information would help at that point, but I’d call Sol as soon as I had time.

We were driving north on the Hollywood Freeway, heading for the Hathaway motel when it dawned on me that I had missed my lunch date with Millie. I felt a tinge of guilt, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Obviously, I had a good excuse for standing her up, but I should’ve called her. I figured it’d be just one more problem I’d have to take care of tomorrow. I’d call her and explain the situation, right after I cleared up the mess at the bank. I was sure Millie would understand.

Twenty minutes after we left downtown, we pulled up in front of Dink’s Hollywood Oasis on Los Feliz Blvd. A single police unit was parked haphazardly in front of the motel. We got out of the car and ducked under the yellow police tape that marked the property as a crime scene.

No cars belonging to customers were parked in the lot. Except for the lone cop on guard, the place was deserted. The crime scene investigation team must’ve already completed their tasks and left. The coroner would’ve removed the body by now.

Lt. Brodie spoke to the uniformed officer on duty. “We’ll only be here for a few minutes, Ernie. Continue with what you were doing.” The uniform moved back to his position by the motel office.

Our feet crunched on the pea gravel covering the lot as Brodie and I made our way down the line of small bungalows. We darted into the weed-infested space between the bungalows numbered 5 and 6.

In back of number 6, I saw the corrugated tin tool shed. The door was smashed open, the cardboard cartons inside scattered about, all of them torn open with the contents spilling out on the floor.

We stepped cautiously inside. Light streamed in from the opening.

“Is this the way the shed looked when you were here with Hathaway?”

“No, someone broke in.”

“Do you see the soapbox that held her files anywhere?” the lieutenant asked.

I moved farther into the shed and looked around carefully.

The huge White King Soap carton was missing.

I silently shook my head.

Lt. Brodie looked at me. “We have an APB out on Roberts, armed and dangerous. When we catch up with him I hope he doesn’t try to run.”

The Sergeant dropped me atmy car in the lot at the South Gate Court. Instead of heading to Downey and my apartment I took the Ventura Freeway and set off in another direction.

My first inclination was to just let it go, let the authorities handle the murder. But I felt strongly that Roberts hadn’t killed the old woman, and figured when the cops found him-and if he hung around L.A. they certainly would-he’d probably get shot while trying to escape. At least that’s the way the report could read.

At this point, I trusted no one.

I’d been worked over by thugs driving a black Buick, been warned to quit messing where I don’t belong by a femme fatale-the mystery woman in a mini-skirt at the In-N-Out burger place on Grand Avenue-and threatened by a billionaire at the Reagan fundraiser. Even Rinehart, the current District Attorney, said he was keeping an eye on me.

People were going to a great deal of trouble attempting to cover up a commonplace murder that happened almost thirty years ago.

And now they were killing people.

It dawned on me-if I kept digging-that I could be next.

But I couldn’t stop now.

Roberts had been framed in 1945 and I had no doubt that he was being set up again. But if he was innocent, what about the clothing tag from his dress-outs found at the scene, the evidence all sealed up in the plastic bag that the lieutenant, with a gotcha look on his face, had pulled from his pocket and slapped down on the table?