Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Finding the car there would lead nowhere even after its registration was traced, because it was a stolen car.

Gary’s plan for getting the Ford on the lot had been both clever and simple. In the middle of the previous night he had stolen it from an all-night parking lot and had left it for Irma in a previously designated spot on a side street a short distance from the plant. Irma had simply parked her own car behind the stolen one and had driven the Ford onto the lot. When she left the plant, she walked back to her own car.

Gary’s plan not only lent credence to the story Irma would eventually have to tell about her abduction, but also gave him an ironclad alibi in the remote event that he was ever suspected of being the kidnapper. All the time the heavyset man was supposed to be following Irma’s car, Gary was working in the Plate Shop in the middle of fifty other workers.

Irma drove to Griffith Park, parked the car in the zoo area, took a brunette wig and some dark sunglasses from the glove compartment and put them on. She walked to the nearest bus stop and caught a bus going to South Los Angeles.

Gary had reasoned that when Irma’s car was eventually found in Griffith Park, it would be assumed the kidnapper had left his own vehicle parked there, had forced Irma to drive him to it, then had switched cars.

Irma got off the bus at 24th Street and walked the three blocks to the motel where Gary had rented a light-housekeeping unit. No one was in sight when she let herself in with the key Gary had given her.

The unit consisted of a living room, bedroom and bath, with a kitchen alcove off the living room. Gary had stocked the refrigerator and a cabinet with both food and liquor.

Irma took off her wig and sunglasses, fixed herself lunch, then sat down to watch television.

Gary showed up at six. He reported developments as he mixed a pair of salty dogs at a counter.

“There’s both good and bad news,” he said. “I’ll give you the good first. My phone call to your husband went beautifully. I called his office from the public phone booth in the plant foyer during the three p.m. coffee break. I made my voice so husky, even you wouldn’t have recognized it. Your friend Hazel must have phoned him that you never showed for lunch, because he didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. He sounded as though he had been expecting such a call. He agreed to pay the hundred grand, but first wanted proof that you were all right. I told him to be at home at ten tonight and he would get a phone call from you.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“Your guess that he’d pay up to a hundred grand without even calling the cops was wrong. I stretched my coffee break so I could check his reaction to my call by keeping an eye on his office door. Approximately fifteen minutes after I made the call, about half the LAPD walked into his office.”

Irma frowned. “The news hasn’t gotten hold of it. I’ve been watching every TV newscast.”

“Well, the cops must have declared a news blackout, but they’re sure as the devil in on it. It doesn’t really matter, though. There’s no way they can set a trap with the delivery method I’ve worked out for the ransom money.”

At nine-thirty p.m. they left the motel together, Irma wearing her black wig and sunglasses. Gary drove up to the Boyle Heights district to make the phone call, so that in the event it was traced, it would give no clue to the section of town where they were actually hiding out.

They called from an outdoor public phone booth, squeezing into it together. Irma dialed the number. Stanton Carr answered instantly.

Making her voice tearful, Irma said, “Honey, I’m allowed to speak to you for only a minute, and I can’t tell you where I am or answer any questions. I haven’t been harmed, but there’s a gun in my back and the man says he’ll kill me if you don’t pay. Please do as they say.”

“I will, dear,” he assured her. “Don’t worry.”

Gary Sommers took the phone from her hand and growled into it in a husky, disguised voice, “Okay, there’s your proof that she’s still alive, Carr. Now, here’s what you do. When the banks open tomorrow morning, you get a hundred grand in used twenty-dollar bills and put the money in a suitcase. Take the suitcase to your office and wait for the mail delivery. Further instructions will arrive in the mail.”

He hung up.

As they got back in the car, Irma said, “I thought you planned to give all instructions by phone.”

“I do. That mail bit was just to keep the cops from tapping his office phone. I’ll be phoning his office again from the foyer phone at the plant, and I can’t chance a trace. That’s what got stupid Captain McCloud in trouble, phoning his girlfriend an hour after his wife’s funeral. The post provost marshal had put a tap on her phone.”

“Who’s Captain McCloud?” she asked, totally at sea.

Pulling away from the curb, he said casually, “My Army C.O. It was his stupidity that ended my Army career. The provost marshal got the idiot idea that he’d paid me to murder his wife, mainly because he withdrew five grand from the bank the day before I deposited four thousand. I have no idea what he did with the money, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did hire somebody to kill his wife, because he was certainly glad to get rid of her. But it wasn’t me. I won my money in a crap game.”

“They accused you of murder?” she asked in a shocked voice.

“They investigated me for murder,” he said. “They never accused me of anything. There wasn’t enough evidence to make a case against either of us, but the idiot provost marshal wouldn’t let it go. So the Army did what it usually does when it decides soldiers are guilty of something, but can’t prove it. It brought pressure on him to resign his commission and for me to request discharge. They gave him the choice of resigning or being shipped to Greenland. They busted me and put me on permanent garbage detail.”

“But you didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?” she asked.

He smiled sideways at her. “Do I look like a killer?”

Smiling back, she said, “You look like a lover.”

Gary didn’t stay when they got back to the motel. In case he needed an alibi later, he wanted to be seen as much as possible, while Irma was missing, by people who knew him. He planned to drive to a bar in his own neighborhood where he was well known and stay until the closing hour of two a.m.

Gary didn’t reappear at the motel until the following midnight. Meantime there still had been nothing at all on the news about the kidnapping; very hush-hush.

“Get your wig and glasses on and let’s go,” he said as soon as he was inside.

“Is it over?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. There’s a hundred grand in a suitcase in the trunk of my car.”

As she donned her disguise, she asked. “What about all the food left here?”

“I’ll clear it out tomorrow,” he said. “Rent’s paid until the end of the week. Hurry it up.”

When they were in the car, he headed south.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I’m going to take you to Long Beach.”

“Oh? Why so far? I thought you were just going to turn me loose somewhere in L.A. I’m not supposed to know where I was held anyway, being blindfolded all the time.”

“Slight change in plans,” he said.

They drove in silence for a time. Presently she asked, “Any trouble about the pickup?”

“Not a bit. Matter of fact, I was able to simplify the original pickup plan considerably.”

“Oh? How?”

“I’ll tell you when we get where we’re going,” he said. “Right now I want to think about all the lovely money in the trunk.”

It was nearly one a.m. when he parked the car at a deserted stretch of shore in Long Beach.