Dan Marlowe - Killer with a Key

“Look at this!”

Johnny caught the blare of a headline in the paper pushed at him. “You mean we made the front page?”

“No, no.” Mike pointed. “Not here. Read it.”

Johnny looked at the black, block print. Robert sanders killed at apartment door. And in the subheading in smaller print, Prominent Public Relations Expert and Clubman Shot Four Times. The story started, “Robert Sanders, 54, 219 Cypress Lane, was shot and killed by as yet unknown assailants in the driveway of the co-operative apartment where he made his home. The body was discovered-”

Mike Larsen's voice was tense as Johnny lowered the paper and looked at him inquiringly. “Robert Sanders owned the business where Ellen and Lorraine worked.”

Johnny flattened the paper for another look. “When-”

“Sometime after midnight, it says. Body found at three-forty-five a.m. by a neighbor.”

Johnny stared at the subheading. “Four times-”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Here was a guy in a groove-four shots for Sanders, and four shots from the dark sedan. “This kind of starches things, Mike. Looks like we only had the semi-windup here; the main event was across town. You can bet me it was under the same auspices.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The batting order's got to be Sanders first, then Ellen. Ellen was over there, and if she didn't actually see it she saw or sensed enough to scare her green. Trouble was the pistol-packin' type saw Ellen, too, and followed her over here. Followed her right inside after I slowed him up on the street. A strong move. No Pollyanna, this citizen.”

“What's this about a slow-up on the street?”

Johnny explained. “The police should tie this into a pretty tight knot, Mike; the guy dug a furrow all the way across town.”

Mike looked doubtful; the yellow-flecked eyes returned to the paper. “Even supposing the time element is right, Johnny, it would still be a pretty good trick-”

“Even better than you know.” Johnny thought of the unregistered room, and shook his head. “The thing I want to know is how a guy like that could get upstairs in the place here without being seen by Vic or Paul or me. Strangers get asked questions, but nobody blew a whistle.” He looked at Mike. “What kind of a guy was this Sanders?”

“I guess I'd have to say he was a good businessman-”

“Public-relationese for a hard-nosed bulldozer?”

Mike waved a hand as he seated himself on a leather-covered bench. “Speak no evil. He was smooth, and he got along. His wife was his partner in the business, and she was every bit as good as he was. I've heard rumors it wasn't much of a marriage, but nobody could say that about the business tie-up. They were good.”

“Was Ellen running around with this Sanders?”

“No.” Mike tasted the word, leaned back and tried it again, less positively. “No. I never saw them together, and I never heard anyone say they'd seen them together-”

“But there was something?”

“All right.” Mike stood up abruptly. “I'd heard… stories.” His hand gesture was impatient. “You can always hear stories. Once in a while they might even be true.”

“You told Ted Cuneo that Lorraine Barnes wasn't running around with Sanders. That on the level?”

As suddenly as he had stood up, Mike Larsen sat down. “What made you ask that?” He spread his hands. “We live in an imperfect world, Johnny.”

“Yeah. And now we got a self-appointed critic runnin' around and leveling off imperfections. No reservations on this Lorraine Barnes-Robert Sanders menage-a-deux?”

“No reservations. Which isn't to say that there are any notarized affidavits on file-” He hesitated and ran a hand over his chin. “This stuff I just told you-”

“I'm takin' a page in the Times. You get the by-line.”

Mike's grin was sheepish. “All right, I shouldn't have said it. You going by for Lorraine?”

“Yeah. What's she like, really? I don't think I've even seen her more than three or four times, when I'd stop by to pick up Vic when we were going fishin'.”

This time Mike's grin was cynical. “How do the poets put it? Fire-and-ice. For once you're well matched. She can melt down a bronze idol with her tongue, and she's right in your class in rocketry take-off. She has a very definite mind of her own. Keep your left hand high.”

Johnny grunted, waved idly and turned to the stairs. He walked the short distance to Vic's place; it was only six blocks east and two south of the hotel, one of the occasional half-block enclaves of apartments in midtown New York's business jungle. He walked because he needed to think, and he felt that he had the germ of something that needed thinking about.

He knew now why Vic had gone up to Ellen Saxon's room. Check that, Killain-by a process of elimination you think you know. Only one thing in the world could have taken him up there.

Somehow Lorraine Barnes had known that Ellen Saxon was in the hotel, and Lorraine had called Vic. To give Ellen a message or to bring her to the phone, more likely. Wait a minute-how did Vic know where she was? He didn't even know she was there at all until Lorraine told him so.

Johnny worried it around, unconsciously walking faster. Vic had to know, somehow; it was the only thing that made sense. And because Ellen was in an unregistered room it would have complicated things for Vic to call her through the hotel switchboard. He had to go up there to deliver the message, whatever it was. And finding the body and not knowing how deeply Lorraine was involved, Vic had gone into the deep freeze rather than say the wrong thing.

How had Lorraine known Ellen was in the hotel? There was only one way that she could have known. She had to have been someplace close to whatever it was that had panicked Ellen. If it hadn't been Lorraine herself, Johnny reminded himself suddenly. He tried again to think of the figure hunched down over the steering wheel of the dark sedan. Could it have been a woman? He shook his head; he didn't know. Could Lorraine have killed Robert Sanders and followed Ellen Saxon back to the hotel to kill her, too? Possible. Not probable. For one thing, Lorraine was known to hotel personnel. Still He looked up and around suddenly. His preoccupation had carried him half a block beyond Vic's apartment, and he turned and retraced his steps. Seen in the daylight, the neighborhood and the building were depressing. A rust-streaked iron fence with blunted pikes stood sentinel across the building's frontage and on both sides of the walk to the front door. He entered the gate and strode up the narrow cement strip; once past the door the vestibule was more spacious and attractive than hinted at by the exterior.

He pressed the button beneath the neatly lettered name plate, and tried to visualize Lorraine Barnes from the few times he had met her. A no-nonsense woman, he would have summarized it. Younger than Vic. No beauty. Attractive? He tried to remember; somehow The buzzer blasted through his reverie, and he leaned into the mouthpiece. “Johnny.”

“Come right up.”

He knew it was the second floor; he walked up, and she was standing in the open door of the apartment when he emerged into the hall from the landing. She stood aside to let him enter. “I do appreciate your taking this trouble, Johnny.”

He listened to the cool voice; he waited while she closed the door, then followed her inside from the short hall into a living room furnished in quiet good taste. A sofa of the type that could be made into a bed ran along the longest wall, and two comfortable armchairs were at the far end of the room facing the television set. The sofa's and armchairs' slipcovers were a flowered pastel, and almost matched the drapes. A wedding picture stood beside the percolator on the coffee table, and Johnny looked down at a younger-looking Vic and a Lorraine who seemed not to have changed at all.