Burden of Guilt Page 3

  “Did Hal ever mention a guy named Dana?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

  “Both you and Cordain are telling the truth about last night? Shirley had a phone call, stuck her head around the bedroom door and just said she had to go out?”

  Wanda’s eyes opened again reluctantly. “She caught us at the wrong moment when neither of us was very big for conversation with a third party.”

  “What happened after she’d gone?”

  “What are you?” she snapped. “Some kind of a hearing-and-peeping Tom?”

  “I mean, what happened during the rest of the night?” I snarled.

  “We went to sleep, what else?”

  “What else?” I echoed bleakly.

  By the time I got back to the alcove bar, Cordain was busy making what I hoped was his third, or fourth, drink. He looked up at me briefly as I came close to him, then concentrated on pouring more rye into the glass.

  “What did you and Kingsley talk about when he was here last night?” I asked.

  “None of your goddamn business.”

  “You’re wrong,” I told him. “Shirley Lucas’s murder makes everything my business. Why don’t you get smart and cooperate, Cordain?” I smiled meaningfully at him. “The way Kingsley did.”

  “You’re kidding,” he rasped. “Gerard still thinks like a lawyer. He wouldn’t give a dying man a glass of water before he’d checked out his credit cards.”

  “Pine City,” I said evenly. “A secret place for a secret meeting between management and the union boss; between Strachan and you, with Kingsley along as your adviser.”

  He put down his drink and his thin lips twisted into a savage scowl. “Since when did Gerard suddenly develop a big mouth?”

  “Since his wife discovered Shirley Lucas’s body in their rented backyard a few hours ago,” I said. “Kingsley figures her body was planted there by somebody who wants to frame him for a first-degree homicide.”

  “Why in hell would anyone want to frame an ex-lawyer?” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth slowly. “If it was me they were trying to frame, it could make some sense.”

  “Maybe it’s Kingsley’s attempt at an alibi?” I suggested. “It could have been him who called her here last night and arranged to meet her, then killed her and left her body in his own backyard.”

  “I don’t see Gerard killing anybody, and especially not Shirley Lucas,” he said flatly.

  “Okay. You figure he wouldn’t kill the girl, and there’s no reason for anybody to want to frame an ex-lawyer, but if it was you they were trying to get at it could make sense.” I grinned vaguely at him. “So how about somebody trying to get at you through Kingsley? Somebody like Joe Dana, for instance.”

  “Dana?” His mouth twisted angrily again. “So Gerard told you about him, too!”

  “Only that he was bucking for Stensen’s job and lost out to you.”

  “It’s crazy!” He picked up his drink again. “Dana’s capable of most of the dirty tricks there are, but not murder. You’ll have to think again, Lieutenant.”

  “Tell me one more thing,” I said patiently. “You invited Shirley on this trip as a big surprise for Kingsley, right?”

  “Sure,” he nodded impatiently.

  “Didn’t you know he had his wife with him?”

  “Sure, I did. I also knew he wouldn’t be bringing his wife over here for any of our conferences.” He shrugged quickly. “For her, that would be slumming! She figures Gerard lost all his class when he got involved with a labor union. That bitch had all the class in the world when she married him, only no money! Hear her talk, you’d figure it was her old man who built Nob Hill. The one thing she always forgets to mention is how he blew his brains out, after he realized he never would be able to explain what happened to that three million at the next annual meeting of his stockholders!”

  “You don’t like Adele Kingsley very much?” I said cleverly.

  “I hate her guts, almost as much as she hates mine!”

  “Kingsley and his personal assistant, Tyler, both pleaded that the whole thing be kept secret,” I said. “They didn’t want the whole secret deal between you and Strachan to become public knowledge. How do you feel?”

  The expression on his face was a more than adequate answer. “It would ruin me!”

  “When was the last time you saw Joe Dana?”

  “Maybe a week back, in San Francisco.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant,” he rasped, “but I’m sure as hell going to find out!”

  Chapter Three

  The Starlight suite is about the ultimate you can have in the Starlight Hotel, and Strachan had it. I told the desk clerk not to bother announcing me, and he still had a stunned look on his face the moment before the closing elevator door removed him from my vision. The suite came complete with its own front door, and doorknocker, even. A brunette opened the door, and it looked like Strachan came complete with everything he might need whenever he traveled, too.

  She looked a model of coolness and efficiency. Her hair was pulled loosely back across her head and tied in a knot at the nape of her neck, emphasizing her wide forehead. The wide gray-green eyes looked highly intelligent, the nose was aristocratically straight, and her broad mouth very self-assured. She was wearing a simple beige linen dress buttoned all the way down the front, which did nothing to hide the promise of the full, shapely figure beneath it. I told her who I was, and that I wanted to talk with Mr. Strachan.

  “I’m Moira Arthur,” she said in a low, pleasant-sounding voice. “Won’t you come in?”

  I stepped into the front hall of the suite, and she closed the door behind me. “If you don’t mind waiting here for a moment, Lieutenant?”

  I watched her walk away from me, admiring the insouciant swing of her buttocks beneath the thin linen. The sight of them fazed me a little and made my fingers twitch involuntarily, then she disappeared into the living room. I waited, pondering the promise of those lilting orbs, then the door opened and she stuck her head out.

  “Please come in, Lieutenant.”

  I walked past her into the room and she closed the door again, leaving herself on the inside.

  The guy standing on the rug in the center of the room looked everything a bigshot executive should look, from the crown of his full head of thick gray hair right down to the soles of his custom-built, and probably imported, shoes. There was a trim gray moustache on his upper lip and a deep coat of tan on his leathery face. His suit matched the quality of the one Kingsley had worn earlier in the morning, and his necktie was a thing of fine conservative craftsmanship in its own right.

  “I’m James Strachan,” he said in a crisp voice. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

  “It’s strictly confidential,” I said, and glanced at the brunette.

  “Miss Arthur is my legal consultant. There’s nothing you can say to me that can’t be said in front of her.”

  “You’ve just embarrassed the lieutenant, James,” Moira Arthur said in an amused voice. “He already had me tabbed as your personal secretary, sharing your bed and board on a business jaunt to a faraway city!”

  “I would never have thought such a thing,” I lied unconvincingly. “You sure have got the wrong idea about me.”

  “What’s the right idea, then?” she asked archly.

  “Well…” I hesitated as I fished for a suitable reply, but Strachan leaped into the breach.

  “Before you both get carried away,” he remarked acidly, “perhaps you would be kind enough to explain the reason for your visit, Lieutenant.”

  It took a little time—from the discovery of the girl’s body through the interviews with Kingsley and Cordain. There was a short silence after I had finished, then Strachan looked at the girl.

  “What do you think, Moira?”

  She nuzzled her lower lip gently between very white teeth for a couple of seconds. “My immediate reaction is you s
hould get the hell out of here back to L.A. and forget both Cordain and his union. But I have the feeling it won’t be as easy as that.” She looked up at me suddenly. “Do the newspapers know about this, Lieutenant?”

  “Not yet,” I told her. “Kingsley and Cordain both asked it be kept secret. I’m going along with that for the moment, but the county sheriff could have different ideas. There’s no guarantee it won’t leak out, either.”

  “You’re right, of course. I think you’ll have to stay and sit this thing out, James.”

  “Then pick up a newspaper tomorrow morning and read the headlines!” he said harshly. “Read how a call girl has been murdered, and the killing is somehow involved with the boss of a labor union, who’s in Pine City to make a secret deal with the president of an L.A. manufacturing company!”

  “If that happens, you’ll pick up the newspaper in L.A. and read the same story,” the brunette said calmly. “Either way, you won’t come out of it smelling of roses, but you’ll look a little better if you don’t run away from it. I hate to remind you at this moment, but I told you the whole deal stank from the beginning, and you should have no part of it.”

  “Except the whole plant would be at a standstill right now if I’d taken your advice, Moira,” he snapped. “Once Cordain got the plant organized he had me over a barrel, and he knew it!”

  “What I don’t understand is how the people working in your plant let themselves get suckered into joining a so-called labor union like Cordain’s running in the first place,” I said.

  “He picks his targets,” Strachan said bitterly. “Our business is as an assembly plant. We put bits and pieces together so they become bigger bits and pieces, then we send them to another plant where they become usable electronic units. The majority of our labor is semi-skilled at best; they lead a monotonous working life putting those bits and pieces together five days a week, and the chances are ninety percent of them don’t know what the finished product is, and don’t even want to know. You can’t expect any kind of company loyalty in that kind of situation. Then along come Cordain’s professional agitators and tell them they’re being robbed, while the management is making millions in profit out of their labor. Join the union, and there’s pie in the sky for everybody! A thirty percent wage hike, longer vacations, better recreation facilities—you name it, and the union will get it for them!”

  “So then you make a deal with Cordain. In return for an annual payment, he’ll promise you get no more trouble from your labor,” I said. “How much, Mr. Strachan?”

  “I don’t think it’s any of your business, Lieutenant!”

  “Tell him, James.” The brunette sighed gently. “If you want the lieutenant to be cooperative about keeping the story out of the newspapers, he’ll expect cooperation in return.”

  “All right!” He glared at her coldly for a moment before he looked back at me. “He’s asking a half-million—I’m offering a quarter. That made a standoff at the first meeting, but we both know there will be a compromise reached at the second or third meeting.”

  “When was the first meeting?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Here?” He nodded, and I went on. “Who was at the meeting?”

  “Myself, Miss Arthur, Cordain, and his so-called legal adviser, Kingsley.”

  “What time did it break up?”

  “Sometime around six-thirty.”

  “What did you do then, Mr. Strachan?”

  “I took Miss Arthur to dinner at the restaurant here in the hotel. Why?”

  “Just routine,” I said. “What did you do after dinner?”

  “Said good night to Miss Arthur, came back up here, had a drink, then went to bed. I was bushed!”

  “What time was it when you said good night to Miss Arthur?”

  “I don’t have to stand for this!” he suddenly exploded. “Anybody would think I was suspected of the murder, the way you keep on asking these goddamned stupid questions!”

  “You want to tell him, Miss Arthur?” I said politely.

  “The lieutenant is handling a homicide case, James,” she said smoothly. “Everyone, however remotely connected with the victim, is a potential suspect until proved otherwise.”

  “A few minutes of ten,” he said sullenly. “Miss Arthur has a room on the next floor down. We said good night in the elevator.”

  “So I’ve only got your word for it that you came straight up here, had a drink, then went to bed,” I said.

  The gray moustache bristled. “Are you seriously saying that I need some kind of an alibi, Lieutenant!”

  “No.” I smiled brightly at him. “I’m just establishing the fact that you don’t have any alibi.”

  There was a stifled giggle from his legal consultant, and the look he gave her said for her to drop dead, quickly and painfully.

  “It’s possible somebody is trying to get at Cordain through Kingsley,” I said. “Knowing of the girl’s previous association with both of them, and knowing why they’re here in Pine City. If that story was leaked to the newspapers, I’d guess Cordain would lose his job as the union boss, and there would be no chance of the agreement between you and him ever being made. Would you agree with that, Mr. Strachan?”

  “Don’t answer, James,” the brunette said firmly. “We don’t mind the lieutenant establishing you don’t have an alibi for the homicide, but I see no reason to help him establish you also could have a motive!”

  “Just one more question?” I asked her.

  “I don’t guarantee an answer.” She grinned briefly. “But go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “Have you ever heard of a man called Joe Dana?” I said.

  There was a momentary reaction in Strachan’s eyes, then he blinked quickly and shook his head. “Dana? No, I don’t think so.”

  Moira Arthur sighed again. “James is fundamentally an honest man, Lieutenant.”

  “You mean that’s why he’s so stupid?” I said in a sympathetic voice.

  “My God! I’ve had all I’m going to stand from both of you!” Strachan said in a choked voice. “You can get the hell out of here right now, Lieutenant, and as for you, Moira, you can—”

  “Shut up!” Her level voice sounded like a whiplash.

  Strachan stood there with his mouth hanging open and his eyes goggling with disbelief. The brunette ignored him and concentrated on me.

  “I didn’t spend a year of my life working as an assistant D.A. without learning something about the methods of all kinds of police lieutenants,” she said evenly. “I’ll admit this is the first time I ever met one of your kind, Lieutenant, but I’m sure if I noticed James’s reaction when you mentioned that name, you certainly did, too.”

  “Just whose side are you supposed to be on, anyway?” Strachan muttered.

  “Yours,” she snapped. “But a fundamentally honest man like you, James, always makes a lousy liar. If you try to get smart with the lieutenant, you’ll wind up dangling from a meathook!”

  “Dana called me around lunchtime yesterday,” Strachan said in a strangled voice. “He knew everything that was going on, including the meeting set up for the afternoon. If I stalled off signing the contract at the meeting, he said there was every chance I would never need to sign it, because Cordain was about to be replaced as the boss of the union. I said how did I know it wasn’t some kind of gag, or maybe Cordain himself had put him up to making the call just to test my reactions? Dana said I only had to trust him the one time and he’d contact me later to arrange a meeting, where he’d explain the whole setup to me in detail. So I agreed to stall on the first meeting, but I told him if I didn’t have the full story from him within the next forty-eight hours, I’d go ahead and sign up with Cordain.”

  “You haven’t heard from Dana again?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I want to know as soon as you do hear from him,” I said, “and I want you to agree to meet him at any time or place he says.”

  “All right, Lieutenant,” he said sour
ly.

  He took the card I gave him and looked at it like I had just handed him a pornographic photograph. The girl was giving her undivided attention to the blue sky outside, and I somehow got the feeling that the interview was finished. They both said good-bye with the same kind of enthusiasm used in saying hello to a mortician, and I walked out of the penthouse, then spent the time in the elevator idly speculating on Moira Arthur’s buttocks and wondering what kind of an assistant D.A. she had made. It was an intriguing thought.

  I took time out for a steak sandwich and arrived at the office around two-thirty in the afternoon. Annabelle Jackson, the sheriff’s secretary, was conspicuous by her honey-blonde absence. It gave me a nasty moment when I saw Sergeant Polnik sitting in her chair.

  “I never knew you could type,” I said brightly.

  “Miss Jackson’s in with the sheriff right now, Lieutenant,” Polnik said in his gravelly voice. “I got to see him when she’s through. Chee!” The aggrieved look gave his face a startling resemblance to that of a Saint Bernard having just discovered some fink has watered his brandy. “Could I help it if some dope gives me the wrong room number?”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” I said carefully.

  “What I’d like to know,” he continued morosely, “is how can a guy run a motel if he can’t even remember the room numbers right?”

  “He must have a big problem,” I agreed.

  The trick, when Polnik is telling you something, is never to ask a logical question because it throws him completely. I filled in the long silence by lighting a cigarette and unsuccessfully trying to blow smoke rings.

  “He presses all the panic buttons,” he said suddenly. “I get to the motel and he comes running out to meet me, waving his arms in the air like the world’s fallen apart. There’s been a shooting in number twenty-four, he says, and the guy that did the shooting is still in there. So I get down to number twenty-four and find the door’s locked, shoulder it in, and bust into the room with my gun in my hand.” He shuddered at the memory. “Chee! I was more embarrassed than the broad, even!”