Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

“Yes,” Loretta admitted.

“She’s off to that singles bar again.”

Loretta waited.

He fingered his necktie.

“I figure what’s good for the goose is good for the gander—I’m going out too.”

“Your philosophy is none of my business,” Loretta said distantly.

“No, I guess not,” he conceded. “What I came over for—I wonder if you’d do me a favor?”

“Such as?”

“In case Angela decides to come back and wonders where I am, will you tell her I’m at the Friendly Tavern? That’s the one a couple of blocks from here, over on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“You expect her to come back?” Loretta asked.

“I don’t know. But if she does I’d like to make up. You can tell her I’ll wait for her at the tavern right up to closing time—2:00 a.m.”

“All right, Mr. Garrett. If she stops here I’ll deliver the message.”

When he had gone and she had relocked the door, she began to worry seriously. Her built-in lie detector told her John Garrett had no expectation of his wife returning and asking Loretta where he was. She was convinced that the real purpose of his visit was simply to let Loretta know where he was going. And the only reason she could think of for that was that he was constructing an alibi.

She was worried enough to consider calling the police. But after some thought she decided that if she told the police her reason for suspecting that John Garrett planned to murder his wife was merely intuition they would think she was dotty. In the end she merely had another sleepless night.

In the morning when she looked out her kitchen window and she saw the Garretts companionably weeding the back lawn together she was glad she hadn’t phoned the police.

Maybe she was getting dotty, she thought. She decided to suppress any future suspicions she had about John Garrett before she got herself classified at the police department as a crank.

The next Friday night battle was mild enough so that Loretta didn’t even have to use the broom. But the week after that they had one as loud and long as the one that ended with John Garrett goading his wife into making a return visit to the Coed Club.

Again it started about 8:00 p.m., while Loretta was having a cup of tea at her kitchen table. At first she could hear only an occasional phrase as one voice or the other rose momentarily. The shouting didn’t begin until about half an hour later, when the sounds of battle became so loud that they distracted Loretta from the television program she was watching.

She put up with it for another twenty minutes, but when it showed no sign of abating she went to the kitchen for the broom.

Mrs. Garrett was screaming something about her husband’s sloppiness as Loretta raised the broom handle. Then, before she could drive it against the wall, there were three sharp thumps immediately followed by Mrs. Garrett shouting, “Some night I’ll make you eat that broom, you old hag!”

Loretta stared at the broom in astonishment. For a wild moment she thought it had somehow leaped from her grip to pound against the wall of its own volition, then she realized no such thing had happened—the thumps had come from the other side of the wall.

But if one of the Garretts had thumped on the connecting wall for some incomprehensible reason, why had Mrs. Garrett yelled at her for doing it?

It didn’t take her long to figure out a possible answer. When she peered out her kitchen and saw that the Garretts’ carport was empty, it became the probable answer.

Going to the Garretts back door, she unsuccessfully tried to peer past the edges of the shade drawn over the pane of glass in the upper part of the door. Unable to see anything, she knocked, at first timidly, then with increasing force. She really didn’t expect an answer, but it took her some time to get up sufficient courage to try the door. It was locked.

All this time the argument in the kitchen raged on. While Loretta stood listening, Edward, the cat, nearly gave her heart failure by rubbing against her leg. Gazing down at him reminded her of the key she had forgotten to return.

Returning to her apartment for the key, she let herself into the Garretts’ kitchen. Entering with her, Edward made a beeline for the front room.

As Loretta had suspected, a tape recorder was on the kitchen table, playing back a tape.

Loretta was familiar with tape recorders—the Welfare Department used them instead of dictaphones. Shutting off the machine, she studied the ninety-minute tape, then, returning it to the machine and switching to FAST FORWARD and periodically switching back to PLAY in order to check that she had not yet reached the end of the recording, she finally did reach it. It ended with the same scene as two Fridays previously, when John Garrett goaded his wife into slamming out of the house to go to the Coed Club.

No wonder Garrett’s voice had sounded so calculating that night, Loretta thought. He had been recording the entire fight for replay. Now she understood why the man had been so concerned over how well she could hear their fights and how closely she listened. He must have been relieved to learn she paid as little attention as possible since that lessened the chance of her recognizing tonight’s battle as a replay.

Her suspicion of John Garrett had not been from dottiness after all, she thought, with less relief than regret. Her regret was because she was quite sure it was too late to save Mrs. Garrett.

Loretta visualized the probable sequence of events. Some time prior to 8:00 p.m., and probably immediately prior to it, Mr. Garrett had strangled his wife with a nylon stocking and loaded her into the back of their car. Then he had returned to the house long enough to switch on the recorder. By the time Loretta heard the first raised voices he must have been well on his way to MacArthur Park.

She decided that his plan must be simply to abandon the car near where the other two victims were found, then return to the house by bus or taxi. Bus, probably, she thought—there would be less chance of his being remembered on a bus. He planned to get back before the tape played out, thus establishing a perfect alibi. No doubt he meant to stop by Loretta’s again to make sure she had heard his wife slam out of the house, then go on to the Friendly Tavern to complete his alibi by sitting there until it closed at 2:00 a.m.

Loretta ran the tape back to the place it had been before she hit the FAST FORWARD button and switched the machine to play. Then she went back to her own apartment to use the phone.

When John Garrett arrived home a half hour later, he found his next-door neighbor and two policemen waiting on the front porch. From inside his duplex, only slightly muffled by the closed front door, came the sounds of verbal battle between him and his wife.

“Good evening, Mr. Garrett,” Loretta said in a tone of reproach.

Licking his lips, he looked from her to the two policemen. In a desperate attempt to deny the obvious he asked, “Who’s that arguing in my apartment?”

Both policemen ignored the question. The elder of the two intoned, “Are you John Garrett?

“Yes,” Garrett admitted nervously.

“Mr. Garrett, you are under arrest on suspicion of the murder of your wife, Angela Garrett. You are not required to make any statement, and if you do it may be taken down and used against you in evidence. You are entitled to legal counsel, and have the right to have an attorney present at all stages of the arrest, arraignment and trial procedure. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one may be furnished you at public expense.”

“Murder?” Garrett said on a high note. “What makes you think my wife’s dead?”

The older policeman said, “Because while you were on the way home by bus a couple of officers found her body in the back seat of your car where you had parked it at Seventh and Parkview.”