Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

He was in shirtsleeves, and he was half drunk.

He spoke with the careful enunciation of an intoxicated man striving to conceal his condition. “Sorry to bother you, Miss Beam, but I wondered if my wife was over here.”

In thirty years of welfare work Loretta had developed an instinct for detecting lies that was little short of miraculous. She knew instantly that her next-door neighbor was fully aware that his wife wasn’t with her.

“No,” she said politely. “Why would she be here?”

“Well, we had a little argument and she walked out. I thought maybe—” He let it trail off.

The man certainly must have heard his wife say she was going to a singles bar, Loretta thought. He must also have heard her drive off. What was his purpose in this pretense?

She said, “I thought I heard her shout something about going to a singles bar, Mr. Garrett.”

“Oh, sure—I heard that. But I thought she was just trying to make me jealous. I thought maybe she ducked in here, figuring on letting me stew for a while. I never thought she’d do anything as dangerous as actually going to one of those places.”

“Dangerous, Mr. Garrett?”

“Well, both of those stocking-killer victims were picked up in bars.”

Loretta recalled the two unsolved murders some months back. The victims, both women, had been found in their own cars, parked near MacArthur Park, strangled with nylon stockings that were still knotted around their throats. The investigation in each case had disclosed that the victim was last seen leaving a tavern with a man who had just picked her up. Unfortunately, in neither case had anyone been able to give a clear description of the man.

Loretta said, “The odds against your wife running into the stocking killer must be rather long, Mr. Garrett.”

“Maybe, but it could happen. I’m really worried.”

Loretta’s built-in lie detector told her he wasn’t actually in the least worried. The chilling thought occurred to her that perhaps he was making such a point of his worry because he planned to hunt down his wife, strangle her with a stocking, and let the stocking killer take the blame.

Instantly and a trifle guiltily she dismissed the thought as both melodramatic and impractical. Angela hadn’t mentioned to which bar she was going. Her husband would never be able to look for her in every bar in Los Angeles—even it he did have homicidal intentions.

She said. “I really don’t think you have much to worry about, Mr. Garrett. She’ll get home safely, I’m sure.”

“I hope so,” he said with patent insincerity. “I’m sorry we got so loud that you had to knock on the wall again, Miss Beam.

“I’m sorry I had to,” she replied with the old embarrassment.

“Did you hear the whole fight?” he inquired. “What it was about, I mean?”

Her embarrassment evaporated, to be replaced by polite chilliness. “I try not to eavesdrop, Mr. Garrett. I make a conscious effort not to listen to what is said when you and Mrs. Garrett have your—disagreements. It isn’t the words but the volume that sometimes causes me to knock on the wall.”

“I see. Then you don’t know what it was about. But you did hear Angela say where she was going?”

For some reason she could not divine, the man wanted to know exactly how well she could hear through the wall, and also how much attention she paid to what was said.

She said, “Mr. Garrett, I probably could have heard every word of your— discussion —if I had listened. But I’m not interested in your personal affairs. I simply don’t listen.”

“I see,” he said again. “Well, I’m sorry I disturbed you, Miss Beam. Good night.”

As she closed and relocked her door, Loretta wondered what in the world that had been all about. She also wondered why it had taken him half an hour after his wife left to come over and inquire about her.

A possible answer occurred to her. Perhaps he had been sitting home plotting what to say to Loretta and working out the details of some devious plan. Despite her conclusion that he would never be able to find his wife, even if he did have homicide in mind, she couldn’t dispel the irrational worry that he had exactly that in mind.

That worry prevented her from sleeping well. The more she thought about it the more certain she became that he was planning something. She could sense it as surely as she used to sense that a welfare client was about to take a job and not report it.

The next morning she was relieved to discover she had worried needlessly. Angela Garrett had returned home safely. She came over, suffering nothing worse than a hangover, to tell Loretta that she and her husband would be out of town for the rest of the weekend and to ask her to feed the cat. When Loretta said she would be glad to, the woman gave her an extra key to her back door and told her the cat’s dish and the cat food would be next to the electric can opener on the kitchen counter.

The Garretts must have returned very late Sunday night because Loretta didn’t hear them come in, but she heard them depart for work on Monday morning. They were gone before she remembered the key to their back door. She reminded herself to return it that evening, but it slipped her mind.

The following Friday the Garretts had their worst, longest fight since Loretta had moved in. It started about 8:00 and by 8:30 it had developed into a shouting match. At 9:00, having put up with a hideous half hour of abusive screaming without pause, Loretta pounded on the wall with her broom. There was the usual momentary silence, then Angela shouted, “Some night I’ll make you eat that broom, you old hag!”

Undisturbed, Loretta put away her broom and started to make herself a pot of tea. The fight next door continued, but at a subdued decibel level. At about 9:30, however, it got loud again.

Loretta was still in the kitchen, washing her teacup and teapot, when she heard John Garrett call from the kitchen next door, “You think that same guy you claim bought you all the drinks last Friday will be at the Coed Club again tonight?”

“What do you mean, claim? ” Angela called back petulantly from the front room.

“Aw, nobody bought a mess like you any drinks!”

There was an outraged yell that started in the front room and ended in the kitchen. “You think I made that fellow up?” Angela shouted. “Well, maybe tonight I’ll just accept his invitation to go to breakfast after the place closes!”

“You can forget about that!” he said loudly. “You’re not stepping out of this house tonight!”

“That’s what you think, buster!”

During the ensuing silence, which Loretta assumed was because Angela was in the bedroom dressing to go out, she wondered why Mr. Garrett had deliberately goaded his wife into going back to the singles bar. There was no question in her mind that it had been deliberate. She had heard the calculation in his voice.

She started to become uneasy. Perhaps Mrs. Garrett had survived last Friday night only because her husband didn’t know where to find her. But apparently she had since then not only told him where she had gone but what had happened there.

In a few minutes the silence was broken by John Garrett insisting, “You’re not going to that club—and that’s final!”

His wife’s only answer was the slam of the back door. Again Loretta peered out her kitchen window and saw Angela climb into the car and drive off, leaving the carport light on.

Five minutes later Loretta’s doorbell rang. Again it was John Garrett. This time he was dressed in a suit and necktie. Although he had obviously been drinking, he didn’t seem as drunk as he had been the previous Friday.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Beam,” he said. “I suppose you heard Angela storm out again.”