Bare Trap (24 page)
Authors: Frank Kane
As soon as the door had closed behind her, however, he got up to watch the indicator over the elevator, noting that it stopped at the eighth floor. He stepped into the vacant car next to the one the columnist had taken, pushed the button for the eighth floor.
On the eighth floor, Lulu Barry stepped out, followed the carpeted corridor to 825. She looked both ways up the corridor, knocked. A woman’s voice answered from behind
the closed door.
“What is it?”
“Let me in,” Lulu Barry told her. “I must see Mr. Richards.”
There was a click as the door opened. Lulu Barry stepped in, walked to the bedroom beyond.
There were three sharp cracks of a small caliber pistol. Somewhere a woman screamed. Closer at hand there was the sound of a struggle, a cry of frustration.
The man who had been reading his newspaper in the lobby rushed in, service revolver in hand.
“Okay, Murph,” Inspector Devlin’s voice came from the bedroom. “We’ve got her. Get some lights in here.”
The detective walked to the bedroom door, felt his way along the wall, pushed in the floor plug for a huge torch lamp, bathed the room with light.
Lulu Barry stood cowering back against the wall, her clenched fist against her teeth. At the window, Johnny Liddell and Inspector Devlin wrestled furiously with a struggling figure.
“I’ll take that gun, lady,” Devlin grunted. He forced a small revolver out of the girl’s hands, turned her over to Liddell.
“The right one, Inspector?”
Devlin examined it, nodded. “Looks like it. It’s a twenty-five all right.”
The girl tried to wriggle out of Liddell’s grip, finally collapsed breathlessly. “It was a trap. You trapped me,” she panted. The sea green of her eyes dripped venom.
“Sorry, Margy. We had to have that gun.”
“Those phone calls. The one to Barry and the inspector. They were phony, weren’t they?” She glowered at him, her lips drawn back from her teeth.
Liddell nodded. “I figured you’d try to wrap it all up by getting rid of Richards and trying to dump it into Lulu Barry’s lap.”
“She tried to frame me.” The columnist’s voice sounded as if she couldn’t believe her own words.
“She did call you then?” Devlin wanted to know.
The columnist nodded, seemed to have trouble taking her eyes off the girl. “She said she was Richards’s nurse, that he had come to and I might be able to get a story before the police got here.”
Liddell nodded. “She planned to wait until you got here, shoot Richards, go out the window, and have you caught here with the body. It was a nice frame, but it didn’t work, baby.”
“Okay. But you’ll have a tough time proving it. Sure, I shot the fat louse. But there’s not a jury that will — ”
Liddell let go her arm, motioned for the detective named Murph to take over. “Wrong again, baby. Richards is in the hospital.” He walked over to the bed, pulled back the covers, exposed a lifelike dummy made of wadded pillows and a blanket. “We had to pull the plug on the light so you wouldn’t tumble. But we figured you’d be too intent listening for Lulu to notice.”
“How did you ever settle on her, Johnny?” Lulu Barry asked curiously.
Liddell shrugged. “I should have spotted her earlier. It was all there.” He looked at the blonde sadly. “She left a trail a mile wide.”
Margy sneered at him, looked away.
“We knew it had to be someone the kid knew and trusted.” He tabulated on his fingers. “Otherwise he never would have turned his back. That eliminated Yale Stanley and his boys.”
The columnist nodded.
“Richards told me the kid had called him and said Stanley knew where he was. What he meant was that Margy got the call from the kid. He was lonesome and scared. He wanted her to come out. Right?”
The blonde ignored him.
“She called Richards, told him where the kid was, then to add a finishing touch, she told him Yale knew where the boy was. But when she called, she was only a few minutes from the kid. She killed him, called Stanley, and told
him to get out there.”
“Why?”
Liddell shrugged. “She probably hoped that Stanley would figure Richards was trying to frame him and there’d be some shooting.”
Lulu Barry tried to understand, ran her finger tips across her forehead. “But why should she kill Shad?”
“She was married to him. She told me Richards had made her marry him so Yale couldn’t get the kid’s dough.” He looked at the blonde. “She wanted the money for herself — money that didn’t exist.”
The blonde stiffened. “You’re lying. The kid is Wally Reilly’s only heir. It’s all his and now it’s all mine.”
Liddell shook his head. “Wally Reilly died broke. There is no money.”
The blonde fought furiously to break away from the detective assigned to hold her. “You’re trying to cheat me,” she ranted. “You’re trying to get it away from me.”
Liddell shook his head again. “There was no money, Margy. Reilly died broke. So broke he committed suicide. The only money he left was the insurance money and that’s gone long ago.”
The blonde stopped struggling, looked from face to face. “No money?”
Devlin nodded. “It’s the truth, Miss Winslow.”
The girl’s face contorted with rage. Then she began to gasp. The gasps became louder, shriller, finally erupted into hysterical laughter. “No money? What a joke,” she screamed. “What an awful, horrible joke!”
Inspector Devlin nodded for the detective to take her out. He led her unresisting to the door. “No money, Liddell?” she asked dully.
He shook his head.
She started to shake again with uncontrollable laughter. “Then I killed him for nothing. It was all for nothing.”
“That’s right, baby. You killed him for nothing. He was only a kid. He trusted you and you killed him for nothing.”
The blonde stopped short, pulled her arm free from the
detective. There was a wild gleam in her eyes as she pushed the blond hair out of her face. “Okay, so I killed him for nothing. What was he to me? Nothing. With that money I could have been somebody. I could have showed them. I would have showed them all.”
Devlin nodded to the detective, who dragged her from the room. Liddell wiped a thin film of perspiration from his forehead. “It wasn’t very pretty. But that’s that. The gun will wrap it up.”
Lulu Barry’s hand shook as she pulled her cigarettes from her bag. “Why did she take the chance of coming here to kill Richards?”
Liddell picked a cigarette from her pack, stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “She had to. Richards could have put the finger on her. He could have told us that he didn’t ask her to marry the kid. That, plus the fact that it was she and not he who had talked to Shad would make it look bad for her.”
Devlin grunted. “Suppose Yale hadn’t latched on to Richards? He still could have made it tough for her.”
Liddell shrugged. “I think she had planned to kill Richards from the very beginning. She hoped Yale would save her the trouble out at the hide-out, but if he didn’t, we would have had another murder on our hands in town.”
“And there really was no estate? Wally died broke?” Lulu asked.
Liddell nodded. “Richards went through his own money raising the boy. He didn’t want him or you or anybody to know the kid’s father was a bust.” He held a match to the columnist’s cigarette, lit his own. “Wally did commit suicide, you know.”
The columnist shook her head. “I didn’t know.” She walked over to a chair, sat down. “I’m a foolish old woman, I guess.” She looked up at Liddell. “I didn’t hate the boy, Johnny. He was too much like Wally for me to hate him. I thought I was looking out for his interests.”
Liddell nodded.
“I thought Richards was going through Shad’s money. I
wanted to force an accounting for the kid’s sake.” She tried a smile that was only half good. “I guess I have some apologizing to do.”
“And I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Devlin grunted. He walked over to Liddell, slapped him on the shoulder. “Nice work — for a private eye.” He held up the little gun. “This puts it on ice. Without this baby, we might not have been able to make it stick.”
Liddell nodded, watched the inspector say his good-by to Lulu Barry, and walk out.
“I heard about Glennon, Lulu,” he said after the door had closed. “Pretty rough, wasn’t it?”
The columnist nodded. “I didn’t know how deeply she was in it. I knew she was out at Laguna. As soon as you left, I called her, told her I knew the whole story. I figured it would give her time to get to Mexico or wherever she intended to go.” She shrugged. “She had other ideas.”
Liddell nodded. “You were pretty close, eh?”
“We’ve been together for more years than I like to admit.” The columnist sighed. “I thought that was the least I owed her. A chance to make a run for it. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“I’m not too sure, Lulu. After all, if that babe’s plans had meshed, I would have been in the morgue instead of her. It may be ungallant of me to say it, but better her than me.
Lulu Barry shook her head. “You really think she tried to put you on the spot by tipping Maxie and the Duke that you’d be at the Lamont that night?”
Liddell nodded. “It was blind luck for me and tough luck for Terry and the Duke that her plans went wrong.”
“I guess you’re right. I never had Glennon figured that way.” She shrugged. “Goes to show you never know what somebody else is thinking. I’m going to miss her.”
“Maybe she’s better off, Lulu. It’s like Devlin said. A gal like Glennon couldn’t have stood up under a stretch in Tehachapi, and that’s where she was heading.”
“How about you, Liddell? Where are you heading?”
“New York.”
“Why not stick around? This town could use a couple of guys like you. Besides, Muggsy’s going to be awfully lonesome after you go.”
“Don’t kid me, Lulu. Muggsy will never be lonesome. Besides, I can’t stay around.”
“Why not?”
Liddell grinned bleakly. “I wouldn’t want to be within a thousand miles of this place when the judge sentences that blonde. I don’t think I could bear thinking of what a waste of good material that’s going to be.”
• • •
Muggsy Kiely sprawled comfortably on the couch in her apartment. She finished reading the newspaper, dumped it on a pile alongside the couch. “Yale Stanley pleaded guilty to attempted extortion today, Johnny. Looks like he and Maxie are going to take a nice long rest.”
Liddell grunted.
“And did you see what Lulu Barry had to say about you in her column today? She thinks you’re some pumpkins.” She stretched her neck to see where Liddell sat in an armchair, staring glumly out over the city, one leg dangling over the arm of the chair, a glass in his hand.
He grunted again.
“What are you looking so poisonous about? It isn’t every private eye that rates almost a full column rave from the great Lulu Barry.” She grinned maliciously. “By the way, she agrees with me.”
“About what?” Liddell growled.
“She thinks you ought to stay and go into the movies. She thinks you have the makings of a great lover.” She reached over, picked up the paper. “No kidding, Johnny. She says right here that your performance over the phone from that blonde’s apartment was masterful.”
Liddell glared at her, emptied his glass, set it down.
“And that was only the performance over the telephone,” Muggsy chided.
“Very funny,” Liddell agreed dryly. “I told you it was
all strictly business with the blonde. Unfortunately.”
Muggsy stretched, yawned. “Now don’t go sensitive on me, Romeo. Maybe Lulu’s right. Maybe you ought to think about staying here. With her in back of you, you could practically write your own ticket in this town. It’s not such a bad town, Johnny.”
“I’m still going out on the six o’clock plane,” he told her flatly.
Muggsy stuck her tongue out at him, grinned. “Sticks and stones will break my bones but lies will never hurt me.”
“You don’t think I am, eh?”
“No.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out an airline ticket. “Take a look, baby.”
Muggsy pouted. She made room on the edge of the couch, patted it invitingly. “You’re mean. I told you I was ready to apologize for suspecting you of doing some fancy cheating with that blonde.”
“You should.”
She nodded. “I do. I’m firmly convinced you weren’t doing any fancy cheating. Just the good old-fashioned kind.” She watched while he disentangled himself from his chair, started toward her. “I’m only kidding. I know you’re upset about what she’s going to get. But forget it, Johnny. She had it coming.”
“Sure she had it coming. I just wish it could have been postponed until after that trip she was going to take to New York with me.”
“Why, you — ” Muggsy hit him with a pillow. He continued to advance on her menacingly. She hit him with the other pillow.
They wrestled on the couch; she bit his ear.
He missed the six o’clock plane.
Also the midnight, eight o’clock, and six o’clock plane the next evening.
If you liked Bare Trap check out:
Green Light for Death
JOHNNY LIDDELL
carefully stripped the cellophane jacket from a cigar, bit off the sealed end, spat it onto the floor. He stared unblinkingly at the girl stretched out before him. Her hair was as thick and coppery as he had remembered it. There were a few more lines crisscrossing under the eyes than there had been in the old days, but the lips were still full and inviting. As she lay there now, her lips slightly parted, she showed the perfect little teeth he had always admired. She was uncovered to the waist, her small, perfectly molded breasts bared to the searching yellow light.
“That her?” Detective Sergeant Happy Lewis sounded slightly bored with the formality.
Liddell nodded. He jammed the cigar into his mouth, clamped his teeth savagely into it. “What’s supposed to have happened to her?” he wanted to know.
The homicide man signaled to the morgue attendant. Liddell watched without comment as the attendant drew a rough canvas sheet over the girl’s face, slammed the oblong metal drawer into place with a clang that reverberated through the whole morgue.
“Don’t have to worry about disturbing the other guests.” The morgue keeper showed the yellow stumps of his teeth in a grin. “They’re real sound sleepers.” He looked from the homicide man to the private detective expectantly. When nobody gave him any encouragement, he shuffled off toward the office in the rear, muttering under his breath.
“Well?” Liddell persisted. “What’s supposed to have happened to her?”
Detective Sergeant Lewis shrugged. “What usually happens to a dame like that? She either jumped or fell off the end of the pier.” He pushed his fedora back on his head, wiped his forehead with the side of his hand. “Got enough of this?”
Liddell scraped a long wooden match on the sole of his shoe, applied it to the end of the cigar. “It was neither,” he said flatly.
“It was neither what?”
“It was neither accident nor suicide,” Liddell asserted. “Nancy Hayes had too much sense to walk off the end of a pier. She had too much guts to jump off.”
“She didn’t call herself Nancy Hayes up here,” the homicide man told him wearily. “Up here she was Nancy Martin. And she either jumped or fell.” He stared moodily at Johnny Liddell. “If you were to try to make something else out of it, I think maybe you ought to have a talk with Connors first. He’s the police chief up here. He don’t like for private dicks to come into his territory upsetting things and making trouble.”
Liddell nodded, exhaled a feathery tendril of dirty white smoke ceilingward. “That’s how Connors feels about it. How about you?”
Lewis studied the private detective’s face for a moment from under his eyelids, then dropped his eyes. “Like I said, Connors is the chief. How I feel ain’t important.”
“She was a nice kid,” Liddell indicated the metal drawer. “You would have liked her if you knew her. I’d hate to think somebody could pull a stunt like that and get away with it. Wouldn’t you?”
Detective Sergeant Happy Lewis looked unhappy. “Maybe,” he admitted cautiously. “But Connors still calls the turn around here.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about Connors. I’ve got an idea he and I are going to be good friends before this is over.” He tapped a thin film of ash off the end of the cigar. “That is, of course, unless he’s got some angle in trying to hush up this case.”
“Hush up what case?” The homicide man pinched his long thin nose between thumb and forefinger. “Maybe I forgot to tell you. There is no case. The dame either jumped or fell off the end of the pier.”
• • •
Chief Connors sat behind an oversized, varnished desk and eyed Johnny Liddell with no sign of enthusiasm. He reached out for a pack of cigarettes on the corner of the desk, selected one on the basis that it was less rumpled than the rest, hung it from his lips.
“So you’re a private detective, eh?” His eyes dropped from Liddell to the credentials on his desk. He riffled through them, snorted, shoved them back across the desk. “Anything on your mind?”
Liddell picked up his papers, rearranged them, shoved them into his breast pocket. “Thought I’d check in with you before I went to work.”
“We don’t like peepers up here in Waterville, Liddell.” The chief’s deep voice didn’t belong to his thin frame and washed-out eyes. “I understand that you came up here to do a job for the Martin dame.”
Liddell nodded.
“Well, whatever kind of a caper she was setting up, it fell through.” Connors scratched a paper match across the strip on the box, applied it to his cigarette. His colorless eyes never left the private detective’s face. “So I suppose you’ll be catching the next train back to town. I’ve got one of the boys arranging your reservations. Like that you won’t be delayed.”
Liddell grinned, dropped into an old armchair, draped his leg over the arm. “There’s no hurry, Chief. I was figuring on staying around until you broke the case.”
Chief Connors’ eyes flicked from the private detective to Detective Sergeant Lewis and back. “Maybe you ain’t heard. There is no case. It was an accident or a suicide.”
“So I’ve been told. But it wasn’t either. Nancy was murdered.” Johnny Liddell rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “If you’re not going to break the case, I intend to.”
“Maybe there’s more to this than I know, Liddell.” The chief’s deep voice grew dangerously soft. “Maybe you know some things that we ought to. You’re so sure it was murder, suppose you break down and let us in on it.”
Liddell grinned, shrugged. “Just guessing, Chief.” He indicated the homicide man with a toss of his head. “If you’ve got any ideas about tying me into it, your boy here can tell you that I was on the train when Nancy got it.”
“Nobody said you were in on it, Liddell,” Connors growled. “But seeing as how she was your client, maybe she told you something. Maybe she was getting you up here to put the shake on somebody, eh?”
“I haven’t seen or talked to the kid in years,” Liddell told him. “Last time I saw her she was hoofing in an upholstered sewer on 47th Street.” He took the cigar from his mouth, studied the wet end, pasted a loose leaf back with the tip of his tongue. “I’ve been working out of the Coast office for Acme for years. I kind of lost touch with her.”
“She was your client.”
“Technically. Day before yesterday she called the Acme home office. Spoke to the boss down there. Guy named Steve Baron. Asked him where she could get in touch with me. Said it was very important.” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth. “You can check all that.”
“We already have.” Chief Connors leaned his elbows on the desk. “Go on. What’d she want? What was so urgent?”
Liddell shrugged. “I don’t know — yet. I didn’t get to talk to her. Whatever she had to tell me, somebody arranged that she didn’t get around to it.”
Chief Connors snorted cynically, leaned back in his chair. He stared at the private detective through a thin veil of cigarette smoke. There was a faint wrinkle between his eyes that could have been either disappointment or relief. “Who’ve you seen since you got into town?”
“You ought to know,” Liddell grunted. “I arrived at a fleabag this town laughingly calls a hotel about two hours ago, gave my name to the clerk, and for all the action I got you’d thing I yelled Bingo.” He rolled the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “For guys who are so sure the kid either jumped or fell, you’re wasting the time of a lot of homicide men.”
The expression in the chief’s washed-out eyes remained unchanged. “Just routine. Regular check on the deceased’s friends and relatives. Found a telegram from your office saying you’d arrive at the hotel tonight. Thought you might give us some reason why she did it so’s we could close the case.”
The private detective grinned. “Now that goes to show you how suspicious some people are. Here I was thinking you were just keeping me on ice so’s I couldn’t get to talk to anybody.”
Chief Connors looked hurt. His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. “Now why should we want to do a thing like that?”
“I thought maybe you might be afraid I’d frighten off the murderer before your boys had a chance to collar him,” Liddell told him blandly.
Chief Connors’ eyes stopped taking census of the fly-specks on the ceiling. “We don’t look for murderers in a suicide, Liddell.” He looked over at Detective Sergeant Happy Lewis with what approached distaste. “Just to prove to you how co-operative we really are, I’ll let you in on something. We know it wasn’t an accident.”
Detective Sergeant Lewis looked uncomfortable. He rubbed the heel of his hand over the faint stubble on his chin, squirmed.
“It seems we have a real honest-to-god detective on the force,” Connors continued bitterly. “Go ahead, Lewis. Tell Liddell how you discovered it was suicide. Maybe he can arrange for you to get a job peeping through keyholes.”
A faint flush crept up from the homicide man’s collar. He turned to Liddell. “I didn’t think it could be an accident,” he said defiantly. “I told the coroner why and he agreed with me.”
The chief dropped his cigarette to the floor, stamped it out. He applauded sarcastically. “Go ahead, Sherlock. Tell him the rest and save him the price of a correspondence course.”
“I was there when we fished her out of the drink,” Lewis continued without looking in the chief’s direction. “She was naked. All her clothes were piled on the pier.”
“And the m.e. was willing to consider it an accident?”
“He didn’t see the body until it was in the morgue,” the sergeant explained. “I guess he took for granted it was fully dressed when we fished it out.”
Liddell nodded thoughtfully. He transferred his gaze to the police chief. “But your office was willing to write it off as an accident anyhow, eh Chief?”
“Why not?” Connors growled. “What’s the sense of branding the girl a suicide? Call it an accident and let thepoor girl rest in peace. Besides, what’s the use of looking for any scandal?”
Liddell failed to be impressed. “Just like it wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t suicide.” He tossed the soggy butt of his cigar in the general direction of the wastebasket. “It was murder.” He ignored the chief’s angry growl, continued, “No doll who’s worked herself up to the state where she’s going to knock herself off takes the trouble to call in a private eye the day before she does the job.”
“Look, Liddell,” Connors’ voice was low, loaded with menace. “I tried to reason with you. You’re stubborn. Okay, I’ll put it on the line.” He pulled himself out of his chair, walked around the desk, and stood facing the private detective. “This is my town. I don’t want any private peepers coming up here fouling things up. We got enough on our hands right now without any phony murder cases. Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
Liddell nodded. “That’s good advice, Chief. Anything I start I’ll make sure to finish.”
“It could be you’ll find Waterville’s a very bad town to start stirring things up in, Liddell,” Chief Connors told him.
The private detective slid his leg off the arm of the chair, let the chair slam back on all fours with a suddenness that made Connors jump to get his toes out of the way. “Thanks for the advice, Chief.” He took his time about getting up, stood facing Connors. “Of course, if you were to make it impossible for me to look after the interests of my client, I might have to go higher.”
Connors bared his teeth in a smile that fell far short of his eyes. “I wouldn’t make it impossible for you to do anything, Liddell,” he purred. “But there might be some people in this town who wouldn’t give a damn for your higher authority.”
Liddell thought it over for a moment. “You’re telling me there might be someone in town who might try to stop me from proving Nancy Hayes was murdered?”
The chief shrugged, the phony smile frozen on his face. “That’s not all they might try to stop you from doing.”
“What else could they stop me from doing, Chief?” Liddell seemed unimpressed.
“Breathing.”